


Those of Great Ambition

by chlorinetrifluoride



Series: snakes in the water [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dumbledore Bashing, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Good Slytherins, Mental Instability, War is hell, excessive snark, it's from a slytherin POV of course there's going to be dumbledore bashing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 11:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 42,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4433039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/chlorinetrifluoride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not all of Slytherin house became Death Eaters when push came to shove. Not all of Salazar's children wore silver masks. Not all of you ignored the writing on the wall. Some of you turned, faced down your former roommates, and fought against the tyranny of the Dark Lord. Each of you suffered for it, oh how you suffered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PlumTea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlumTea/gifts).



> After much bouncing of ideas off the heads of all my friends in this fandom, I've finally gotten to writing that "slytherins in the first war" fic I've been saying someone should write (it appears that the someone is going to be me).  
> As such, it is going to be very OC-centric.  
> I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.  
> Pairings and whatnot to be added as they become plot relevant.

_By Gryffindor, the bravest were_  
_Prized far beyond the rest;_  
_For Ravenclaw, the cleverest_  
_Would always be the best;_  
  
_For Hufflepuff, hard workers were_  
_Most worthy of admission;_  
_And power-hungry Slytherin_  
_Loved those of great ambition._  
\- The Sorting Hat

* * *

 

**_April 1990_ **

It’s an easily observable fact that history is written by those with power, you think to yourself. It’s why you never hear about Dumbledore’s dalliance with a certain dark wizard back in 1899, or never come to know the name Merope Gaunt unless you hunt around through stacks of parchment more yellowed than Argus Filch’s teeth.

To the generation that cropped up after 1980, the first war against Voldemort could be summed up easily: a resistance group of valiant Gryffindors, aided by a smattering of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, against a psychopathic madman and his army of Slytherin followers. That side of good, The Order of the Phoenix, was a unified front, full of heroic and courageous individuals that did everything they could to stop the machinations of Lord Voldemort and his sycophants, never once stooping to their level.

Albus Dumbledore, a paragon of white magic, made sure of this.

After their rebellion and death, many were turned into venerated martyrs, once Voldemort had been essentially killed by a child. At that point, because it was safe, memorials to resistance members popped up across all of Wizarding Britain. It seemed like everyone had known at least one of those bold individuals.

Gideon. Fabian. Marlene. Alice. Frank. Benjy. Peter. James. Lily. And more, besides. Bright, young, full of life, and taken too long before their time.

Getting sorted into Gryffindor house became a point of pride, since so many of their number had fallen in battle against an unspeakable evil. And while Slytherin maintained some of its old-money prestige, due to the affluence and influence of its members, there were always whispers in the hallways about that lot.

Because where had Slytherin house been during Voldemort’s reign of terror? Heeding his call in their silver masks, of course. Torturing and slaying muggles, muggleborns, and anyone suspected of assisting them. Even the ones who did nothing, did exactly that. Nothing. Never once raised a word of objection, or a wand in offense.

Ambition and cunning?  _Really, now?_

Unless you asked a pureblood raised from birth to end up there, and indoctrinated with delusions of inherent genetic superiority, Slytherin house was comprised of cowards at best, and dark wizards at worst.

If you may know otherwise, you say nothing. What would be the point in arguing? People write history into the format most convenient for the era.

On your way to work, you pass a memorial to Dorcas Meadowes, newly restored, and surrounded by candles that have been lit with gentle pink flames.

Idly, you remember that today would have been her birthday. Thirty-five, is it? She’d been around four or five years above you in Hogwarts, a Hufflepuff prefect who’d given your terrified eleven year old self directions back to your dormitory with a smile.

Later, she had been a reasonably talented duelist as well, but not talented enough, not nearly enough.

You step through the entrance into the Ministry of Magic, and walk as briskly as you can to your department with your busted knee, that old injury that never quite healed properly.

“Morning, Augustine!” someone calls as you pass. You wave in the vague direction of their voice. Damn these hallways and their echoing, eternally confusing the shit out of you.

Alastor Moody spies you across the lift and nods at you, a gesture you return with a genuine smile. You keep meaning to have a cup of tea with that man, even if he tries to find an excuse to get out of it. You keep meaning to have a cup of tea with a lot of people.

Once you’ve reached your office, located in the broom regulatory control division of the Department of Magical Transportation, your assistant mock-salutes you, everything but his face obscured by an impressive stack of paperwork. 

Merlin have mercy on this poor kid’s soul.

“Working hard, or hardly working?” you ask.

“I dunno, you tell me, Mr. Greengrass.”

You ease yourself down into the chair at your desk, stare down your own respective pile of paperwork, and sigh loudly. As an afterthought, you decide to brew a cup of tea and read the Prophet before you even think of tackling any of this nonsense, most of it involving teenagers flying their brooms into muggle territory, and the resultant incident reports.

You dash off your signature on perhaps thirty of these documents before your vision starts to blur with the banality of the exercise. You unfold the Prophet on your lap and start reading. Chances are, the minister won’t decide to check up on your division today (or ever, for that matter).

It takes you maybe fifteen minutes to read the whole thing cover to cover.

But something in the obituary section gives you pause - the report of the accidental death of one thirty year old Ophelia McCann, survived by her husband and young daughter.

You recall Dorcas Meadowes’s memorial, a few blocks away. Yes, people you have known have died, more of them than you’d wished.

Ophelia, though? The pint-sized Ravenclaw girl with a knack for luring Death Eaters into empty buildings, allowing them to nearly corner her, and then dropping the entire ceiling down on them with a well-placed  _Reducto_? Insisting she was of age when she joined the Order, with the documentation to prove it, even though she looked fourteen at best?

Her death strikes you as being a patent impossibility, some sort of mistake. People like Ophelia don’t  _die_.  _(Neither do any of the others who have, you remind yourself.)_

As it turns out, her accident had involved some self-created spell gone awry, and if that doesn’t sound just like something that would happen to her, you don’t know what does.

You recall a Slytherin prefect giving a fourth-year Ophelia detention for devising a charm more effective than Aguamenti and inadvertently flooding half the dungeons. She’d merely stood there blinking, as the water rose around her, and students ran past her, looking faintly fascinated by the whole thing.

_(The day after that stunt, this strange girl walks up to you, her hair plaited messily, her blouse untucked, and her hands cupped together carefully. You have no idea what she’s doing down here. There are likely several people from your house just jumping at the opportunity to hex her. They’d probably hex her anyway, but in this case for once, they have a legitimate reason._

_“You’re one of their prefects, right?” she asks. “Slytherin, I mean.”_

_You nod, and answer in the affirmative. Not the one who gave her detention, though, you add._

_“Oh, well, I sort of knew that already. But I thought I would give you this anyway, since I’m quite sorry for what happened.”_

_She opens her hands, and a monarch butterfly emerges, taking flight, and landing on your left shoulder. Upon further examination, you realize that it isn’t alive in the traditional sense, even as one of its antennae twitch, and its wings fold in._

_It’s a perfect facsimile of a butterfly, carefully crafted from parchment and various shades of ink._

_You mean to ask her exactly what possessed her to hand this to you of all people, how the hell she did it, and what the hell it even means, but once you look up again, she’s already gone.)_

Ophelia McCann. How ironic that she survived the war with Voldemort, when so many others did not, only to die of something wholly unrelated.

You recall Dorcas again, and a wave of sorrow slams into you like the Knight Bus. Not because of her memorial, sitting against a lamppost, clear as day, but because of the people you know who  _did not get memorials._

Too precarious for some, the ones whose families never heard of their extracurricular activities - because it was safer then  _not_ to know - and then never found out the truth the after the fact. Still believing their loved one to be out there somewhere, hiding, maybe. Perhaps that was kinder than reality.

Too shameful for others, to the ones who grew up in the upper echelon of the wizarding world, where blood status was everything. Why would any self-respecting member of wizarding society erect a memorial to a blood traitor? To them, Voldemort may have been overzealous in his methodology, but the Order of the Phoenix? Equality with mudbloods?  _Utterly preposterous._ You don’t know how many pureblood parents must have begun disinheriting left and right upon learning which side their child was really on.

And yes, there were quite a few such children being disinherited. Not every pureblood wore a silver mask. So much of what you know to be fact is diametrically opposed to What Really Happened in the eyes of those who write history.

_(The first war against Voldemort could be summed up easily: a resistance group of valiant Gryffindors, aided by a smattering of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, against a psychopathic madman and his army of Slytherin followers. That side of good, The Order of the Phoenix, was a unified front, full of heroic and courageous individuals that did everything they could to stop the machinations of Lord Voldemort, never once stooping to his level.)_

_(Where had Slytherin house been during Voldemort’s reign of terror? Heeding his call in their silver masks, of course. Torturing and slaying muggles, muggleborns, and anyone suspected of assisting them. Even the ones who did nothing, did exactly that. Nothing. Never once raised a word of objection, or a wand in offense.)_

Sometimes it’s easier to believe their truth, because then, maybe, certain things never occurred. Certain people never died or went insane. Certain atrocities were never committed in the name of  _the greater good_. You were just Confunded at some point, implanted with false accounts of your young adulthood.

However, Alastor Moody nods gruffly at you in the hallways, and Kingsley Shacklebolt gives you a weary sigh of recognition when he sees you, and you know, you know in your heart of hearts, that you are not the one misremembering these events.

_Not all of Salazar’s children were evil. Not all of Godric’s were good._

Find a time-turner strong and precise enough to return you to the tail end of the 1970s, and you could prove it, even if such a device doesn’t exist, and all you have are your memories.

Recollections of young men and women who raised their wands against bigots in masks, who had, months ago, been their roommates amid the green and silver bed hangings in the dungeons.

You can’t recall every single student who went that route, just the mere fact that they existed.

Four stick out in your head, as they always do, those you came to consider your dearest friends - Calypso Shacklebolt, Corona Yaxley, Julius Flint, and Leo Travers. 

You are the last of that quintet, the only one to be both alive and, relatively speaking, in your right mind.

Each of you had little to gain, and everything to lose by resisting the Dark Lord. Still, you took the gamble, knowingly and willingly.


	2. you are young and life is long

_**January 1978** _

The sun is shining, the sky is unseasonably bright, and life is delightful. Or it would be, were you actually outside, and not in the middle of Twillfitt and Tattings, getting new dress robes fitted for Narcissa Black’s wedding. Apparently you’ve gotten even more broad in the arms and chest, no doubt from all the training you’ve been doing in preparation for the Wimbourne Wasps tryouts.

As it stands, one of the Wimbourne scouts witnessed the final and most spectacular game of your Quidditch career, in which Slytherin stomped Gryffindor by nearly four hundred points. Although you chalk most of that victory to the hours of practice and the ability of your team to synchronize so closely, clearly the scout also saw something in you worth tentatively recruiting.

It also helped that they’d seen you play more than once.

You suppose that you did land a respectable number of goals that day, as you had been in top form.

However, the most glorious moment of all had been the look of utter despair on James Potter’s face when your seeker, a fourth year named Sophia Diggory, playing as a reserve for Regulus Black, who had been dreadfully ill at the time, caught the snitch and turned Gryffindor’s already sound loss into some sort of historic embarrassment.

While you relive the greatest afternoon of your life, the tape measure scales areas of your body you would rather have remained unsullied, and sends you plummeting back to reality. Grimacing, you figure that the stiller you stay, the faster you can get out of here and go back to practicing.

If you do manage to land a position as a Chaser, even a second-string one, you’ll probably throw some kind of massive party at your parents’ estate, because, really, playing on the same team as Ludo Bagman? Can one get any closer to perfection than that?

Yet even with the offer of a lifetime sitting in front of you, your parents, practical and staid as always, strongly suggested that you wait a year before accepting any such arrangement. And, not wanting to be evicted from your home as of yet (you quite liked your things where they were, thank you very much), you agreed, going so far as to take on an internship at Gringotts to get them off your back.

This is the year, though, since the offer continues to be valid until September All you have to do is pick the right moment and seize your chance.

“I do believe I’m quite finished with your measurements, Mr. Greengrass,” the tailor tells you then, finally putting away that infernal tape measure. You step off the stool and bow to her.

“Thank you very much, Madam,” you reply, making sure to tip her. Always good to be polite. It’s not as if it’s her fault that her tape measure is utterly depraved.

With your new robes folded and wrapped under one arm, you decide to apparate the short distance to your best friend’s flat, since you told her you might take her up on the invitation to drop by. She’ll be glad to see you, or at the very least satisfied that you’ve finally gotten your dress robe situation sorted out with regards to  _dear, sweet Narcissa’s_  wedding.

Someday you’ll understand how these two young women became so close at Hogwarts, one obsessed with learning new curses, and the other preoccupied with landing an ideal marriage. Today, however, is not that day.

Upon arriving a flight below the correct one, you walk upstairs and and rap Calypso’s door with two of your knuckles.

“Just a minute!” she calls.

Maybe a thousand years later - after she presumably removes her muggle sweatpants, dons more dignified attire, and puts on her makeup - this willowy young woman opens the door a few centimeters, wand extended, her features seeming far less delicate given how annoyed she looks.

With one knut-colored hand, she opens the door fully, stepping outside and giving you the once-over. Then, she relaxes, at the very least no longer seeming furious. Apparently she thought you were her uncle or one of his coworkers, come to check up on her again, hence the less than warm welcome.

“I assure you I am no Auror,” you tell her, emphatically. “I am a Chaser on the pitch, not a chaser of lunatics.”

“No, not unless you’re under Polyjuice. Though I can’t imagine anyone consciously wanting to look like you,” she comments, a wry little grin on her face.

You groan, recognizing her reference. Fifty years from now, she’ll still be finding ways to make fun of that time in sixth year when a female quidditch commentator called you  _“the most attractive player Slytherin house has produced this century”_ , to the general agreement of several other young women in the stands.

You decide not to rise to the bait.

“Neither can I,” you respond coolly. “Get any paler, and I’d be a Weasley. Either that or a vampire.”

“I’ve never once seen a Weasley with brown hair and no freckles,” she says. “Nor any vampires in the sunlight.”

“Implying that you’ve ever seen a vampire.”

“You can’t say for certain that I haven’t, Mr. Greengrass.”

She beckons you inside, closes the door, locks it again, and re-casts the wards. Her flat still looks the same as always - posh, spacious, comfortable, yet crammed to the ceiling with various textbooks. What a waste of a perfectly nice space.

“I’m shocked you didn’t fly here,” she comments, clearing a nearby chair of anatomical diagrams so you can sit down. “Did your old broom finally give up the ghost?”

You fake legitimate offense at such a statement, clutching at your chest as if the very suggestion has brought you to the brink of death. Your Cleansweep Five would never let you down. It is your broom, you have taken loving care of it over the years, and it is therefore immortal. When you finally die in some bludger related accident, you want to be buried with it.

You raise the parcel in your arms so that Calypso can see the name  _Twilfitt and Tattings_  in gold calligraphy.

“Don’t think you would have wanted me on a broomstick with these in tow. What if they’d gotten wrinkled or damaged?” you ask. “What would the Malfoys say?”

She gives a decidedly unladylike snort at that. “Perish the thought.”

At that point, Calypso’s young and highly enthusiastic house-elf appears, bows to, and beams at you, nearly tripping over the carefully pressed curtain-turned-tunic that constitutes her everyday attire. You make a note to mock Calypso for the lilac pattern later.

“Master Greengrass has come to visit!” she exclaims.

You try to greet the elf in return, obviously in a more sedate way, but you cannot, for the life of you, remember what her name is. Calypso gestures in her direction.

“Tolsey, if you would be so kind as to prepare refreshments for Augustine and I?”

“You mean, ‘Augustine and me.’ Diction, Miss Shacklebolt, do not forget,” you chide, grinning. “What would the Malfoys say?”

It’s been a little joke between you and Calypso ever since Narcissa Black announced her impending marriage into the haughtiest family in Wizarding Britain. Asking each other what the Malfoys would say every time you made the slightest faux pas. 

Trip up the stairs and swear loudly?  _What would the Malfoys say?_

Drink too much alcohol at some soiree?  _What would the Malfoys say?_

Spend less than four and a half hours caring for your hair each day?  _What would the Malfoys say?_

Treat anyone except for other Slytherins and possibly the Minister with any sort of respect?  _What would the Malfoys say?_

“Ask me that question one more time and see if I don’t Imperius you into jumping off my balcony,” Calypso replies.

Tolsey glances between the two of you nervously, wringing her hands. Poor thing, always taking things far too literally. You idly wonder if all young house-elves are this neurotic, since yours is wrinkled, ancient, and surly, and therefore not a good comparison.

“Is mistress still wanting me to prepare the refreshments?” she asks.

Calypso nods, thanks her, and asks her to calm down, insisting that her previous statement was not a serious threat. After Tolsey disappears to follow the orders she’s been given, you take a seat in the nearby padded chair. Calypso takes the seat across from you, and sighs.

“How’d you end up with that again, Cal?” you ask in a low voice, pointing to the kitchen.

Calypso twirls a lock of her hair around her finger. “An early Christmas gift from Rabastan. He said that if I was going to live in a flat on my own, while continuing to study at St. Mungo’s, that I might require some assistance.”

“And you haven’t found a way to get rid of her. Figures.”

“I am fairly certain that if I offered Tolsey clothes, she’d have a nervous breakdown,” she says. “Also, it would be the pinnacle of impertinence to reject such a gift, as you are well aware.”

Right, yeah.

“That mean you and he are still engaged?” you want to know.

You need notice as to whether or not you’ll have to get yet another set of new dress robes, so that you can mentally prepare yourself for another encounter with that tape measure. You’re also under the impression that Calypso is about as excited about marriage as you’d be to give up Quidditch, and contrary to the way you two act sometimes, you would never want her to be legitimately miserable.

“We have elected to take a break of sorts,” she says delicately. “He and I both wish for me to complete my studies before we take such a step, and he is also quite preoccupied with, well, other business.”

That’s her diplomatic way of saying he’s probably running around Somerset with his brother and his brother’s wife, torturing muggles, or whatever it is Death Eaters do when they’re not seated in some ally’s mansion, discussing their superiority over the general population.

You would know how it goes. You almost took the Mark. Almost. Then, you sauntered right in the opposite direction, and somehow ended up in this resistance thing. You frequently wake up in the morning and regret your life choices.

“You sure do know how to pick ‘em, Cal.”

Her face falls, her foot shakes, and you know you’ve touched an actual nerve. Before you can apologize, though, she speaks.

“You remember how he was at the rallies,” she reminds you. “I don’t think he cares about it one way or the other. He’s just following their lead.”

That much is true. Rabastan Lestrange always struck you as being a sardonic, educated, apathetic, and faintly irreverent man, which is probably why he and Calypso got along well enough to get engaged. That and Narcissa’s well-intentioned wheedling and prodding, once she noticed that they sought each other out so frequently at social gatherings (likely to knock back gillywaters and make fun of everyone present).

As far as you recall, Rabastan never seemed nearly as fervent in his dedication as his brother, or his brother’s wife (who appeared to be more devoted to the Dark Lord than to her husband), preferring to plot strategy than actually fight. If you hadn’t switched sides this year, you probably would have been friends with him, but that’s neither here nor there.

Regardless of his zeal, he’s still a Death Eater, which puts your best friend in a dangerous position. She’s far from stupid. In fact, you’re sure her marks were much higher than yours, but she doesn’t appear to be doing what the situation warrants, in your opinion. Which would be breaking off the engagement and running for her life.

“So when are you planning to tell him about this whole Order thing?” you ask. “Before or after you exchange the vows?”

Strangely enough, she calms down at that question, and offers a detailed answer. Tolsey arrives at that moment with a tray of tea sandwiches and two glasses of water.

“The Dark Lord has been cracking down on the relationships of his inner circle. He does not wish for personal ties to interfere with his plans, particularly when these personal ties serve no purpose. Lucius and Narcissa will almost definitely have children, ensuring one or more purebloods will brought into the wizarding world. Bellatrix and Rodolphus are two of his strongest followers, regardless of whether or not they bear children. Rabastan and I, though? The Dark Lord’s primary tactician should be focused solely on that duty alone.”

That makes a decent amount of sense. Not enough to allay all of your fears, but it’ll do under the circumstances.

“Furthermore, my uncle makes me a security risk in the Dark Lord’s eyes, one he is not particularly fond of maintaining,” Calypso goes on. “So, while I am technically engaged, for all intents and purposes…”

“…you guys are just staying that way to save face,” you conclude.

Calypso nods, her teeth glinting as she smiles. “Yes. Then, once I become a fully-fledged healer, I can just say that my job is too demanding for me to maintain that sort of relationship, which it probably will be, anyway.”

As if to prove her point, she grabs the nearest textbook, extricates a vial of green liquid from the pocket of her dress, and pours it into her glass of water. You recognize it as Draught of Wakefulness, but decide not to lecture her about consuming those things by the cauldronful instead of sleeping more than twice a week. Mostly because she’ll probably threaten to hex you again.

“So, working hard or hardly working?” you ask her, leaning back in your chair, while she sits up straight, studying. She doesn’t even bother to glance up from her book, so there’s your answer.

“Waiting for Julius to get here, to be perfectly honest.”

Your mouth drops open wide enough to catch flies. “Hold on, you mean, the actual Julius?”

“I was unaware that he possessed such a title until now.”

You need a second to get over your shock.

Aforementioned Julius - the man, the myth, the legend - had been Head Boy and a Keeper in your third year, had subsequently taken some sort of internship at the ministry after graduation, and managed to leverage his charisma and family influence until he became the second youngest member of the Minister’s support staff.

When Slytherins talked about actual excellence, they meant Julius Flint.

“I was unaware Julius had time for mortals anymore.”

“Oh, he does, when he has the inclination,” Calypso assures you, a meaningful look in her eye. “Over certain matters.”

Resistance business, then. By the accounts of all others who had been inducted before you, Julius Flint had been the first person from Slytherin house to join the Order of the Phoenix, and one of its first members in your age group. Even diehard Gryffindor tossers like the Prewett twins, who continue to make snide remarks about other members from your house, have genuine respect for him.

Thinking things over, you ask Tolsey to bring you a daisyroot draught, which you know Calypso keeps stockpiled in her cabinet on the off chance that she decides to entertain guests. It’s more of an old spinster drink than anything else, but it goes down better than firewhiskey, and it gets the job done.

Calypso raises one of her eyebrows at you, looking both amused and scandalized. “You’re going to consume such a substance with Julius coming over? What would the Malfoys say?”

Tolsey bows to you and disappears off to wherever she goes when she’s not actively doing housework. You pop the top on the bottle and take a sip.

“Not here now, are they?” you ask. “Besides, if he’s taking a break from his actual job to come over here, there’s no way it’s good news. I have to prepare myself for this.”

Calypso is forced to admit that you’re probably right. Reluctant to summon the elf again, she rises to get her own bottle, bringing a third for Julius as an afterthought.

“If anyone will need a drink, it’s him.”

“When’s he planning to get here?”

“I should say around five, or thereabouts?”

True to form, Julius apparates into Calypso’s sitting room at exactly five on the dot. He’s got on his usual smart dress robes, sharp and authoritative, with not a single hair out of place. He could have walked out of one of those fashion magazines Narcissa used to carry around, except most of those men don’t also work for the Ministry of magic.

The guest on his arm, however, is a bit of a different story - one highly attractive young woman, with long dark hair tousled around her face. She wears beneath her cloak the shortest robes that common decency allows, and gives off the faint smell of Ogden’s Old firewhiskey. So, none other than Corona Yaxley, one eighth veela, and seven eighths trouble.

“I located Miss Yaxley on my way here,” Julius explains. “I felt her presence would be necessary in this situation, though I apologize for not notifying you about this development sooner.”

You have to hand it to Calypso. She never misses a beat. “Well, it’s certainly wonderful to see you both. Do sit down.”

She summons Tolsey, and has her bring food and drink for everyone present. Julius takes off his hat, hangs it on the appropriate hook, declines a drink when Calypso offers it, and eases himself into a chair near the window, looking outside. Corona removes her high heels, leaves them near the door, and sits down next to you. You are not complaining in the least, since you get to enjoy the view.

Corona bats her eyelashes at you. “How long’s it been, Augustine?”

“Not more than a month or two,” you answer honestly. Whenever the last Order meeting was, you figure.

Ten points to you, though, since you did not stutter or stare at any part of her body besides her face while saying that. You’re getting better at this. Calypso looks between the two of you and lets out a derisive snort.

“Have you learned anything in the interim?” she asks Corona.

“Oh yeah, loads of stuff! There’s this apothecary off Knockturn Alley that has pretty much every kind of substance you could never want, real cheap too! And then—”

“Have you learned anything of actual importance?” Calypso asks again, stressing the words as she speaks them.

The flirtatious drunk act vanishes as if it had never existed.

Corona glances critically around the room, takes out her wand, and casts several nonverbal spells around the walls and doors. For good measure, she also casts a somnolence charm on Tolsey, who curls up in a corner and begins to snore evenly.

“Good enough, Jules?” she asks the man sitting near the window.

It is a true testament to her irreverence that she would dare address Julius Flint as “ _Jules”_ , but he is nonplussed.

Julius tests whatever she’s cast with curses of his own, and the protective charms do not yield.

“I believe so.”

Calypso crosses her arms and frowns. “You know, I did have actual wards all around my flat before you lot came along.”

“Yeah, but your thing’s curses and healing spells more than this sorta stuff,” Corona responds evenly. “Never hurts to be careful, right?”

“You are not incorrect,” Calypso concedes.

Corona swipes the drink that Julius declined off the low table and uncorks the top, before speaking.

“Right, so, Crabbe’s finally mastered the Cruciatus, tested it out on a few blood traitors, wouldn’t stop bragging about it. Snape’s still up to his usual dark shit, but I dunno if he’s actually come up with anything new. Nott’s angling for a job at the Ministry, trying to be one of the infiltrators, but he’s pretty stupid, so I don’t think they’ll actually give him anything important. Malfoy moved up a rank, and got some random book as a reward, meaning someone else got moved down. Macnair and Nott are having some sort of row, I don’t know whether it’s over rank, honor, a girl, or what. As of sometime this week, Bella’s now officially the second in command. Also, the Dark Lord swore in a bunch of students recently, but Jules can tell you more about that.”  

It’s amazing the sorts of things she can find out just by working in The Third Eye, which has to be the most questionable establishment in all of Knockturn Alley, an inn that many Death Eaters and their sympathizers frequent, since the staff asks next to no questions. Allegedly Leo Travers’s brother’s friend’s cousin once saw someone cast the Killing Curse on someone at the bar, and all they did was throw the caster out, and heft the dead body outside.

Then again, Corona doesn’t just work. She also talks to and drinks with the patrons, gets to know them, listens to their stories. To many of them, particularly the ones around your age, she’s practically an old friend. Certainly she’d stumbled into the Slytherin common room at the oddest of hours and with the flimsiest of excuses often enough to become a bit of a legend.

Not the sort of girl you’d bring home to your mum, but definitely the sort you want to be acquainted with. She knows it, too. She banks on it. In terms of espionage, Corona Yaxley is in a league all her own.

“Good work, really,” Calypso tells her, and you’re quick to agree. “Wonder what all of it means, though.”

Julius turns away from the window, looking at all of you at last. “I’d propose that he has to be organizing something major, if he’s shuffling main players around this much.”

You remember your brief tenure of nearly becoming a Death Eater, the sort of environment the Dark Lord cultivated and maintained, and a different idea occurs to you.

“Maybe he’s just being paranoid,” you say slowly. “He’s got a knack for doing that every so often. Doesn’t even trust his own shadow for more than a minute.”

“I might be inclined to agree with your analysis, but not in light of the things I heard today,” Julius replies.

With one flippant hand motion, Corona gestures for him to get on with whatever he has to say. “Which were?”

“Today was the sixth-year career advisement day, and naturally I made an appearance to encourage students with the proper academic credentials to consider interning with the Ministry after next year, even meeting with a few individually to discuss where they might best fit in.”

You can practically hear Corona rolling her eyes, as patience is not a virtue she possesses. Come to think of it, she has to be the least virtuous person you know in general.

“And?”

“I spoke personally to Leo Travers, who had critical news to share with me. Three more from our house have definitely taken the Mark.”

Leo is the lone Slytherin on your side who still attends Hogwarts. A sheep in a den of wolves. Baby wolves, but wolves, nevertheless.

And while it isn’t as bad as the mass murder you’d expected to hear about when you found out Julius was taking a break from assisting the Minister to come over, it’s nowhere near good news. The Dark Lord’s ranks are swelling.

Calypso takes a small sip from her respective bottle, her foot tapping again. “Which three?”

“Severus Snape, Bartemius Crouch Junior, and Regulus Black.”

It’s not as if you can say you’re particularly surprised about any of those names. You would have been more shocked had they not been Marked.

Snape knows nearly as many dark spells and curses as Calypso, who spent most of her vacations wandering into Knockturn Alley, purchasing spellbooks, and practicing on whatever inanimate objects she could find, but unlike her, he is not on your side.

Regulus, well, that kid has been determined to be as different as possible from his godawful embarrassment of a brother since day one. You guess becoming a Death Eater works for that purpose, although he could have just made an effort to not be a git - which he had already been doing - and had nearly the same effect.

Meanwhile, Crouch, whose father never seemed to have any time for the kid whatsoever, hates his father’s guts and everything he stands for. You’d probably hate your dad too, if he was as authoritarian as Barty Crouch. Your dad isn't the greatest, but... it could be worse.

“However, they are far from the only ones,” Julius goes on. “From what I have gathered, two Ravenclaws, a Hufflepuff, and a Gryffindor have been Marked as well.”

In the end, it’s the last bit that really gets you.

All the enmity you have for the prats in red and gold aside, you were pretty sure none of them would ever spawn a Death Eater, mostly because Gryffindors’ excuses for being brash assholes were generally that they were brash assholes on the side of Good. Evidently either you or they went wrong somewhere.

All of you gaze at each other in shock, except for Julius, who simply sits there quietly, hands folded in his lap, either already having come to terms with this paradigm shift, or just being his usual stoic self.

Corona grabs her bottle of mead off the floor and chugs the entirety of its contents. You guess this is the first she’s hearing of this as well.

“Bloody hell,” she says, in slack-jawed awe. “Who would have thought…?”

“If Cornelius Fudge could become Junior Minister, anything’s possible,” Calypso quips.

Julius sighs. “I would prefer that you not make derogatory statements about Junior Minister Fudge in my presence.”

“You do it all the time.”

“I actually know him personally.”

This argument, again.

“Is Leo still safe without the Mark, though?” you want to know, recalling the few friends he has in his year, every single one in Slytherin. “He still hangs around that lot, don’t you think they’re going to wonder why he hasn’t gone the full way?”

Corona is quick to chime in with more information, that issues, for once, in your favor.

“Not if what Crabbe told me a few days ago is true,” she explains. “Corvus Travers royally screwed up some important operation, so it’s not as if the Dark Lord wants to recruit another one, particularly a kid that hasn’t really distinguished himself. I mean, he’s brilliant at Herbology and Magical Creatures, but what use is that? The Dark Lord’s not about to start hurling Venomous Tentacula at muggleborns. Leo’s mediocre compared to the others, and that makes him safe.”

“Point taken,” you agree. “What do we do about this though? It’s clear they’re getting stronger in terms of sheer numbers.”

All of you look to Julius, who instead of coming up with some kind of brilliant and utterly airtight plan, merely shakes his head.

“I have thought it over a great deal, since Voldemort and his followers are a dangerous force, but to be honest, I am really not sure.”

Did Julius just call the Dark Lord by his name? You exchange a significant glance with Corona.

“Can’t the Death Eaters in Hogwarts be apprehended and expelled? Maybe arrested?” she asks. “Whatever they’re doing has to be breaking rules.”

“While there have certainly been cases of questionable circumstances, none have been conclusively linked to any great wrongdoing, aside from dueling after hours. There would be no real case against them.”

“We know they’ve been killing muggles!” Calypso rises from her chair, voice ringing with fury. “Those deaths over in Bristol, you can’t just–”

“No suspects were apprehended, although magical interference was suspected. Law enforcement doesn’t have warrants to use Veritaserum by force considering the utter lack of evidence, and to be quite frank, very few people in the Ministry care about five dead muggles. Maybe a crusading Auror or two, but that’s it. And these are people from powerful families they’d be accusing.”

Calypso balls up her fists helplessly. “I heard what he's been saying... everything he said last year. His ideas, what he’s been speaking about, some of what he’s been planning.”

“And they're just that,” Julius reminds her. “Plans. Not actions. And until they become the latter, and preferably against witches and wizards, I doubt there’s much the Ministry is going to do about it.”

You shake your head, and put your hand on Calypso’s arm to steady her before she loses her temper. “We should tell Dumbledore, then. Tell him to call up an Order meeting.”

“Already done. The next meeting is approximately three weeks from now.”

Corona rolls her eyes in earnest, and tries to take a drink from her bottle before remembering that it’s empty. “Why the wait? It’s not like there’re people dying or anything.”

“Bet the next Hogsmeade visit’s in three weeks,” you tell her.

“So what?”

“A good chunk of the Order are still students at Hogwarts. What other pretext could you come up with them leaving grounds for a while?” Calypso asks.

The moments when you and she operate on the exact same wavelength are always a little unsettling. You suppose this is what happens when you’ve known someone for far too many years of your life.

Julius gives Calypso a curt nod.

“Exactly.”

“What’s the plan until then?” you ask him.

“Fifty galleons says it’s going to be some tripe like, ‘act like everything’s totally normal, and wait for further instruction from Dumbledore’ or something,” Corona mutters.

Julius gives Corona a bitter smile for that. “Essentially, Miss Yaxley, that is the case.”

Calypso gets up to clear the table, and stops herself at the last second.

“So I’ll be seeing how long I can live without eating or sleeping, Julius will be waiting hand and foot on the Minister, Corona will be getting wasted with the enemy, and Augustine’ll be trying not to concuss himself on his broomstick. Got it.”

“Shouldn’t be too difficult,” you add.

It shouldn’t be, but it is.

All of you look over your shoulders more than usual, though as far as you know, you’re personally safe. There’s no reason to suspect any of you, all purebloods, particularly when there are more enticing targets on the Dark Lord’s list.

Calypso’s life barely changes. It revolved around healer training before, and it revolves around healer training now, except for the fact that she begins surreptitiously scanning medical records at St. Mungo’s for injuries related to dark magic.

“If I can show that someone’s condition is consistent with being hit by something like an Unforgivable,” she insists, almost feverishly, “and then if I can link that person’s attacker to someone allied with the Death Eater crowd, then that’s proof.”

All of your attempts to point how utterly unlikely this is to actually happen, and how much attention she could be drawing to herself with her digging, are met with withering glares and occasional angry outbursts. The night she gets furious enough to try putting you in a Full Body-Bind, you disarm her before she can, confund her so she can’t cast wandlessly, and run down to the nearest apothecary for some kind of sleeping potion with which to spike her tea, which, even confunded, she does not want to drink.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. You do what you have to do. She wakes up nineteen hours later, hazy and groggy, but the first thing out of her mouth is, “You Imperiused me?”

“Do you feel better? A little more rational now?”

She stretches, yawns, and admits that she does. Her mouth downturned, and her eyes still a little glazed over, she apologizes profusely for her actions.

Of course you accept it.

Corona continues to serve her patrons, although she confesses to you that she’s hasn’t been trying quite as hard to glean secrets from them. Mostly, she’s been playing the part of the tipsy hostess, only learning what they choose to tell her on their own drunken accord, and not really slipping in her usual sly questions. They don’t seem to notice, and the flow of information doesn’t slow by much, but it makes her feel more secure.

“We already know most of what we need to know,” she says to you, one evening. “Besides, I don’t want to give them any reason not to trust me. Not now, at least.”

You start spending nights at her place, since it’s closer to Gringotts, and it’s good being able to talk to someone else about all this nonsense. Someone who isn’t bogged down by work like Calypso. Also, Corona sleeps better when she’s not alone, as she makes clear to you on more than one occasion.

“Maybe you should get a cat or something,” you suggest.

“What if I don’t want a cat, Augustine?”

She gazes at you, openly, honestly. This is not part of her usual act. Your mouth goes dry.

Even with ninety percent of your mind screaming to the contrary, you refuse to entertain that line of questioning further, because you are already embroiled in enough drama to last you ten thousand lifetimes without adding something like that. She takes it well enough, and doesn’t ask anything of the sort again.

Julius is Julius, playing with his cards close to his vest as always. Whatever nebulous schemes he might be entertaining, he’d be more likely to confide in Calypso than you. You don’t really mind this at all. They can both maddeningly be formal and long-winded when they put their minds to it, so in your opinion, they deserve each other. Let them put their heads together and come up with something.

Based on the contents of his letters, Leo puts on the perfect show of Dark Lord devotee, utterly crushed that he was not invited to fully join the organization of his dreams. Snape, Crouch, and Black the younger all try to console him in turns. You read this over, and try not to laugh, imagining Snape attempting to console anyone. You wonder if Snape tried to pat him on the back and left grease spots on Leo’s cloak in the process.

In order to cheer him up, since he is their dear friend, having always been just as dedicated to the cause as they were, they tell him almost everything that goes on in meetings. It’s the least they can do for him until the Dark Lord decides that Corvus Travers’s incompetence is not his younger brother’s.

Of course, he relays whatever details they give him directly to you, but not any of the others. He does explain why, when you ask.

Calypso terrifies him because she reminds him of Bellatrix Lestrange (not a wholly inaccurate comparison), Corona is too pretty to be approachable (you’re shocked he actually swings that way, though maybe it’s just her veela heritage), and Julius is too important to ever be approachable since he’s practically god (truly the best line you’ve ever heard about the guy).

That leaves you. You don’t really mind this. Leo’s an okay kid, for all his frequent naivete, for his belief that the Dark Lord will be defeated because he’s too evil to win.

He’s like the little brother you never had or wanted, until you just kind of ended up with him one day and got used to it. So here you are.

Ostensibly, you Slytherins were admitted into the Order to act as spies, and while you’d never thought yourself much of a spy, you’d thought Leo even less of one. Too honest in face and mannerisms. Too obviously infatuated with Crouch ever to lie to him. You were wrong on both counts. 

At this point, gangly, awkward Leo Travers is probably the most useful spy in the entire Order.

You’d actually be proud of him if you weren’t scared for his life.

As for you personally, you alternate between being glared at by Goblins (similarly to Calypso, their default expression seems to be glaring) at your Gringotts internship, telling Julius that letting someone else in on his ideas as a backup plan might be a smart move, reminding Calypso to sleep and eat regularly, waking Corona up for work, and playing Quidditch in your yard. In the scheme of things, you are basically useless to the cause of the resistance, aside from keeping your friends more or less functional, but you’re kind of okay with that at the moment.

Given the Dark Lord, you’re sure you’ll find some novel way to die in the months to come.

The days tick by.

The final owl you receive from Leo before the Order meeting informs you of the impending Hogsmeade date, and instructs you to apparate to a field just east of Madam Puddifoot’s at ten in the morning on that day. There, you will find a large black dog that will somehow (assumably through some heretofore unknown canine telepathy) lead you to a safe place to travel by Portkey. Where the Portkey will be taking you is unknown, and why your guide is dog is equally so, but either way, you are not to tell Calypso, or any of Slytherin order about it, since most of you will be traveling separately.

You figure you can do that much. They would all just conclude that he’d finally gone round the bend. That’s what you’ve concluded, anyway.

You check your liquor cabinet, and confirm that you haven’t downed any great volume of absinthe recently. You tip Leo’s obnoxious owl, happily bid it adieu, and go back to the roll of parchment. Leo’s handwriting and signature look normal, even if the message is clearly garbled in some critical way. You hit this letter with Specialis Revealio and every other code-breaking spell you can think of, but the text remains unchanged.

Failing to come up with an alternate course of action in the interim, two days later, you find yourself getting ready to leave for Hogsmeade at nine in the morning, dressed in your work clothes.

“Where are you off to, love?” your mother asks you, on your way out the door.

“Work.”

“On a Sunday? Without breakfast?”

“Got important things to do.”

After all is said and done, she straightens your tie and sends you off with enough eggs and toast to feed a small army. You jog a good mile away from your house, into a thicket of trees, and apparate to where you vaguely remember Madam Puddifoot’s being the last time you deigned to venture near such a place. You end up tangled in a load of garish pink decorations, nearly smashing your face into the front door in an attempt to free yourself. Wincing, you reflect that at least you didn’t splinch.

You check your watch - five to - and head east until you find the clearing Leo mentioned. Fortunately, there are no nutters in black cloaks and masks waiting to ambush you. There is however - since the powers that be enjoy getting a good laugh on your account every so often - a large black dog sitting amongst the dead weeds, wagging its tail at you.

“Roll over?” you ask.

You didn’t know dogs could sneer until this very moment in time.

“Fetch?” you try.

The dog responds by grabbing hold of your trouser leg with its teeth, and tugging you further east. You think you hear a bubbling peal of gentle laughter then, but after looking around, conclude that it must have only been the wind.

Merlin’s pants, it’s cold out here. And snowing. 

“Whoever came up with this brilliant plan can sod right the hell off,” you mutter. Oddly enough, the dog seems to agree with you. Good boy.

You walk until your hands feel numb even shoved into your cloak, even with a warming charm cast, and then you walk some more. As an afterthought, you cast a warming charm on the dog. You and he exchange glances of pure misery every so often, and keep walking. 

“Probably shouldn’t be strolling around with you alone, you know,” you tell the dog, who cocks his head to one side in faint confusion.

You are unsure how long you have been walking through Antartica, with only a canine companion to keep you sane. It may have been centuries.

“Well, Divination - that’s um, fortelling the future and so forth - there’s this giant black dog symbol,” you say. The rational part of your mind that isn’t wholly frozen asks you why you’re explaining the most useless subject on earth to some random dog. “Anyway, it’s called the Grim, and it’s supposed to be an omen of death if you see it.”

The dog continues walking as if he hasn’t heard you, finally stopping you at the mouth of a small cave. You’ve never been this far east of Hogsmeade. 

“You’re not here to kill me, right?”

“I think it would be a bit of a waste for him to kill you after he’s made you walk all the way here,” comes an soft, disembodied voice.

Merlin’s beard, you knew this was going to be some kind of trap. You wheel around, wand extended, although you’re not sure where to aim. Whoever, whatever it is, you’ll disable it. You’ll try to take it alive, but if it comes down to you or them, well, you know who you’re going to pick.

Assuming it’s not a ghost and unkillable by definition. But ghosts can’t kill, right? Those are Inferi. Which are not invisible.

“Who are you?” you demand, wand arm shaking.

“Well, I’m myself,” the voice responds.

The dog looks between the two of you like he’s had quite enough of this nonsense. He flattens his ears to his head and bounds into the cave, barking at you. You ignore him.

“And who is that? Who are you exactly?” Your wand hand is going numb, no longer protected by the fabric of your cloak, but you keep it raised anyway.

“That’s a very existential question to ask, you know.”

You notice then, that the disembodied voice has been leaving footsteps in the snow, and if you squint enough, you can see the faintest outline of their form in the air. They’re shorter and slighter than you by far.

The dog barks again, louder this time, from the mouth of the cave.

“I think we should follow him. He seems to be quite cross with us right now,” the voice says matter-of-factly, their footsteps moving closer and closer to the cave.

“Not until you tell me who you are,” you insist. “Like, your name, or I don’t know, something!”

“My  _name?_ ” this strange being asks, tone rising on the last word. “Why didn’t you ask that before? I’m Ophelia!”

“Oh, for the love of Merlin!” a male voice calls from inside the cave. “Both of you get in here before I throttle you!”

You recognize that voice too. That’s also an Order member, but you can’t quite place whom.

Ophelia McCann, evidently under a reasonably powerful disilliusionment charm, pulls you into the cave and starts casting wards and defensive spells across the cave’s mouth. Your eyes adjust to the relative darkness, and sure enough, there’s a young man crouched in the corner, wearing not a stitch of clothing, and giving the both of you the world’s most impressive scowl, his slitted grey eyes partially obscured by an impressive head of shaggy black hair.

Of course it would be Sirius Black, possibly the last person you’d ever want to see in any state of undress.

“McCann, change yourself back and give me my robes and I might consider sparing your life,” he says. “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s ten degrees in here.”

You feel the energy of a spell being cast, and then there’s Ophelia, wearing her Ravenclaw robes, with a large bag slung around one shoulder, which she throws to Black. He opens the bag, extricates his robes, and dresses at record speed, occasionally glancing at either one of you and rolling his eyes spectacularly.

“Why do I ever volunteer to do anything?” he asks, burying his face in his hands. “I should have just stayed in bed and then nicked a few things from the kitchens.”

You stand there with your mouth open, utterly lost for words.

“Well, we did get to the Portkey point, successfully,” Ophelia points out.

“Minus the part about trying to maintain as low of a profile as possible, Miss ‘why didn’t you ask me your name earlier?’, mother of Gryffindor,” he fires back. He pulls some strange boxy contraption out of his bag, along with what looks like a large square of reinforced parchment. Then, he looks to Ophelia.

“You did cast Muffliato, yes?”

She nods.

He fools around with the boxy contraption, for a minute or two, and then it starts emitting odd little sounds, sounds that eventually resolve into some sort of music? It’s not like any kind you’ve ever heard before.

“What on earth is that?” you ask, having finally found your voice.

Black rolls his eyes yet again. “Pink Floyd.”

You guess that’s what the weird device is called, although you can’t understand why. It’s not pink. And you’re not sure what a floyd even is. While Black listens to his weird music and ignores everything except for the cave wall in front of him, Ophelia does her best to explain everything.

There’s a Portkey due to leave from here at half past one, although neither of them has it. Two more people are set to arrive at this point, and presumably one of them carries it in their possession. Also, Black is an unregistered animagus, and it would somehow look less suspicious to any possible onlookers for you to be following a dog around, than to be in the company of someone from Gryffindor house.

That's probably true.

Furthermore, the thing that Black seems so fond of is called a phonograph, a muggle device that he charmed to work in the wizarding world. It plays music. And Pink Floyd is a musical group, not the name of the contraption.

You’re still confused about the whole thing.

“Why did he bring it, though?” you ask her. "It's not like that's the Portkey?"

Ophelia shakes her head. "It's not."

"Then why...?"

Black turns to look at you, a shadow of a grin on his face. “Why not?”

“It does make the cave somewhat more pleasant, the melody,” Ophelia says, casting several warming charms around each of you. You shrug. To each his own, you suppose. The music isn’t particularly awful, you have to admit to yourself, just quite odd.

Forty-five or so minutes later - you’re not really keeping track of the time - a silver doe gallops through the mouth of the cave, and stares up at Ophelia, wonderingly. 

It’s definitely a Patronus, though whose, you don’t know. For the umpteenth time today, Black scowls. You’d point out to him how very much he resembles Regulus when he does that, but you’re fairly sure he’d hex you into oblivion.

“Don’t tell me you forgot to set the wards to admit her,” he murmurs to Ophelia, shaking his head.

Ophelia flicks her wand gently, and the shield over the cave briefly glows green. In stumbles a snow-caked, disillusioned figure that quickly reveals itself as Lily Evans.

She takes a few seconds to bask in the feeling of the warming charms, smiling faintly.

Then, she waves her wand over her hair so it’ll dry, her green eyes taking each of you in one at a time. “I don’t suppose any of you have seen Leo Travers anywhere?”

“Only people I’ve seen so far is this lot,” Black replies, pointing at you and Ophelia. Evans looks to you, expectantly.

“I haven’t seen him either,” you tell her honestly.

She pulls a water goblet out of her robes, and sets it down in the middle of all of you. Then, she takes out a pocket watch and glances at it.

“Well, the Portkey is set to activate in forty minutes whether he’s here or not,” she informs you. “I saw him leaving, but I lost him in the snow. Wish someone would have checked the weather before making this a meeting point, honestly.”

Black snorts. “Tiny git probably lost himself in a drift somewhere.”

Evans gives him a long, weary stare, and looks as if she wants to say something, but decides better of it. You, however have no such filter.

“Leo’s not a git,” you grind out, through gritted teeth.

“My mistake,” Black replies mockingly, “given those he chooses to associate with.”

You draw your wand.

“Really? Is that so? ‘Cause the way I see it, he’s risking his life every day to help the Order by giving them information about known Death Eaters, while you’re just running your prissy fucking mouth ‘cause you actually have the damn luxury.”

Evans takes out her wand as well, intending to cast a shield by her motions, but this does nothing to ease the hostilities. Black gives her this utterly twisted smirk.

“Go ahead and hex me, Evans,” he jeers. “I dare you.”

“You know I don’t want to.”

“If she doesn’t, I do,” you insist.

“I think you do, though, underneath your Head Girl diplomacy,” he tells her. “I think you’ve wanted to since fifth year OWLs, remember? Under the tree, with me, and Prongs, and S–”

In that moment, Evans’s eyes flash cold as ice, and the curse is halfway out of her mouth when a bolt of lightning sends a huge crack through the left wall of the cave, showering all of you in sediment and pebbles.

Each of you look at the other wildly, searching for the source of that spell. Not Evans. Not Black. Certainly not you. Then…

Ophelia, mouth wide open the way it always is after she casts something particularly intense, blinks at the three of you, wand extended halfway. The wisps of white-blond hair escaping her plait stand on end from the static discharge.

“Okay,” she says quietly. “I guess that one worked out better than I thought. Or worse. I’m not quite sure.”

Nobody really knows what to say to that.

Ophelia turns to you first.

“Augustine, you’re angry because Sirius insulted your very good friend, you’re worried about Leo, and I don’t think you very much liked Sirius to begin with.”

You can’t really argue with that.

She looks over to Evans.

“You’re angry because he decided to twist the knife precisely where it would do the most damage, as he tends to do whenever he gets into one of those moods.”

And then she stares at last, at Black, who seems faintly afraid of her, although she’s roughly a foot shorter than he.

“And Sirius, you’re upset because you keep wishing it was Regulus coming to join us in the snow, instead of Leo, so you’re trying to pick fights with everyone, which is right counterproductive, considering it won’t make you feel any better, and it won’t make your brother  less of a Death Eater.”

After a minute that seems to last a decade, he nods numbly, letting his wand drop to the stone floor, and refuses to look at any of you.

“I shouldn’t have said that, Lily. It was wrong, it was fucked up on so many levels…”

Evans walks over to him, and places a tentative hand on his shoulder, and you’re about to inwardly roll your eyes at her easy ability to forgive when she says, “yes, yes it was.”

Well, then. Your respect for her has gone up by a few degrees.

“I’m sorry, really sorry,” he murmurs, still unable to meet her eyes.

“I know,” she tells him gently. “I’m sorry too, about Reggie.”

“What do we do if we have to fight them?” he asks. “What are we going to do?”

She gazes around the cave, as if the answer might be written in one of its faces.

“I don’t know.”

Black seems to compose himself over that answer, for some unfathomable reason. You will never understand how his mind works, or if it does.

He tucks his phonograph under one arm, walks over to the mouth of the cave, and peers outside.

“Suppose we should probably go Travers hunting, then. How much time do we have left?”

You pick up the pocket watch from the stone floor, and check the time. “Twenty minutes.”

“Okay, this is most definitely not part of the plan, but fuck the plan, because losing this kid was also not part of the goddamn plan,” Black declares. 

He deposits the phonograph just inside of the cave, and dashes outside without a word. Evans follows, right on his heels. Beyond all comprehension, that lot, those daft fuckers in red and gold.

You bend down and pick up Black’s wand from where he left it, and then forgot about it. Fucking Gryffindor. Fucking idiot. You have a brief inward battle with yourself, and then you’re up and running after them.

Thank god the snow isn’t actually deep. Just blinding. Your nightmarish visions of Leo frozen in a ten foot drift dissipate somewhat.

“Oi, Black!” you shout at the vague speck a few feet ahead of you.

“Yeah?”

You gesture for him to come over to you, and when he does, you raise his wand. “I do believe you’re missing something.”

He accepts it from you, momentarily shocked.

“Thank you, Greengrass.”

Evans doubles back to the pair of you, focusing on you in particular.

“We won’t see him in this, but maybe if you yell for him, he’ll hear us. I don’t think there’s anyone else for miles,” she says.

“The disillusionment charms…” Ophelia starts to say.

Evans shakes her head. “Who could see us properly in this, either way?”

You cast  _Sonorus_ on yourself, and start shouting.

“Hey, Leo! Leo Travers, it’s me!” You stomp around in the whiteout conditions, probably walking in circles, but continuing to shout like your life depends on it. “Merlin’s pants, Leo, I know you’re out there!”

Finally, you notice a faint dot in the far off distance, weaving vaguely towards you. Evans raises her wand just in case, but you’d know this prat anywhere.

“Augustine?” he calls, hesitating now.

“Time,” Ophelia whispers. You throw her the pocket watch.

“No, Leo, it’s Slughorn! Get over here, you daft fuck!”

You could punch him, but you’ll wait until after you get to wherever the hell you’re going.

“Three minutes,” she warns, but Leo makes it over easily, once he figures out where to go.

Evans extends the goblet.

“Okay, everyone just put your hands on this and wait,” she instructs. “Augustine, Ophelia, Leo, and… _oh no_.”

Black is nowhere to be found. One minute and thirty to go. You all look for him, making sure to keep one hand on the Portkey, but unsurprisingly, you manage to discern a grand total of fuck all.

“One minute,” Ophelia frets, casting bluebell flames in the vain hope that they’ll melt the falling snow enough for her to see.

Right after she calls “forty-five seconds!”, you notice a familiar git sprinting back toward you from the direction of the cave, clad only in his shirtsleeves, tie and trousers, a bundle in his arms wrapped up in his winter cloak.

The phonograph. Salazar and all his Heirs, this one went back just for his bloody phonograph. 

Evans swears so spectacularly that you nearly flinch, because really, you've only ever heard curse words shouted in such creative configurations on the Quidditch pitch, from men.

Black gets his hand on the goblet just as Evans and Ophelia start a countdown from five. Leo tightens his grip, and shoots you a look of pure alarm.

You feel a lurching jerk in your abdomen, and suddenly, you’re all spinning out toward some unknown destination. You’ve never been religious, at all, but you pray to whoever might be listening that you survive the journey with this group of utter lunatics.

You land in front of a nondescript little cottage, fairly comfortably considering how convinced you were that you’d die on the journey. Potter and Lupin must have arrived before you, because the former takes one look at Evans and charges over to embrace her. But she shoves him aside roughly, makes a beeline for Black, and punches him square in the face.

And she keeps going.

“You idiot!” she screeches, hitting whatever parts of him she can get at.

He raises his arms up to his face defensively, and twists away from her. “Stop it, Lily, you’re killing me!”

“You’d better believe I’m killing you!”

It takes you, Potter, Lupin, Calypso, Alastor Moody, and one of the Prewett brothers to pull her off of him.

“Good to know we’ve all come together and put aside our differences in these trying times,” Gideon Prewett mutters to you, once the dust settles. You turn to him and actually chuckle.


	3. and then one day you find ten years have got behind you

_**April 1990** _

You duck out of work early to visit Calypso in her final resting place, not the pureblood cemetery in Portree with the rest of your lot, but the Janus Thickey Ward of St Mungo’s Hospital, along with the Longbottoms and a rotating cast of poor sods. Every time you pass through its doors, the irony of her being housed on the same floor as the general spell damage cases is not lost on you. This place should be renamed “The Bellatrix Lestrange Ward”, in honor of the woman who put half its occupants there.

You’re waiting for the day Calypso remembers enough of the past to ask you what you’re doing here and why she’s stuck in a bed as opposed to being stuck running diagnostics on the gits across the hall. Generally, when she isn’t being violent and/or trying to hex her healers, she’s mentally somewhere in 1975, telling you that she’s just had to give your mate Avery ten detentions and recommend to Professor Slughorn that points be docked from Slytherin house. That’s right, she told you last time, her expression sour and thoroughly furious, she's filled out paperwork to have points taken from  _her own bloody house._

It’s been 1975 pretty much constantly for the last nine years. You don’t blame her. ‘75 was a good year compared to the ones that followed.

You kind of want to tell her that Ophelia McCann (well, Ophelia Lovegood, really) has died, since she might be the only one who would understand the significance of that, even fleetingly. Maybe she’ll hold this fact in her mind for long enough to cry with you. It’s not as if she won’t forget again by tomorrow, Wednesday at the latest.

You recall the way the blackboard in McGonagall’s class would wipe itself clean at the end of each lesson, as if nobody had ever written a single thing on it for the last twenty or so years. _Your mind is the board back in transfiguration_ , _Cal,_ you think.

However, this afternoon it’s not 1975, but 1970, Calypso’s dark, curly hair, which extends more outwards than down, in utter disarray. Nervous, she wants to know where she is, who you are, and where her uncle might be.

You kind of have to hand it to her. Even as a first-year, she wouldn’t (or won’t, as the case is) betray any outward side of fear so easily.

Healer Christophe - whom you think she unconsciously recognizes from her years of training - gets with the times without missing a beat. He tells her that there’s been a gigantic accident, that she’s being housed here for the next few weeks, and that her uncle will be along as soon as he can get out of work. She’ll be discharged even faster if she drinks her potions like a good little girl.

“I’m not little,” she protests, gulping down a quarter of the sedative nevertheless.

“Too right you’re not,” Christophe says, mirthlessly. “Drink your potion, dear.”

You make a mental note to floo-call the Auror Office when you get home and inform Kingsley that his niece is currently eleven at the present time. Time was relative with Calypso long before she lost her goddamned mind, so you're kind of used to it. Then, you decide not to. He’s finally been promoted to Head Auror, and it’s not like she’s going anywhere, now or ever.

“Who are you, exactly?” she wants to know, once Christophe is gone.

“I’m Nick,” you reply smoothly. Nicholas is your oldest brother, about eight years your senior. You almost hope she won’t remember who he is.

“Oh.” She blinks, adding in a small voice, “oh, right. Is Augustine here? Was he in the accident too?”

You think of the mornings you cannot get out of bed, where you’re fully convinced the Dark Lord was nothing short of cruel by allowing you to live. _Were you in the accident, Augustine? Were you?_

You should have been. You rack your brains and can’t remember for the life of you why you weren’t. You and she could have had double beds here and spent nearly a decade as prefects again, snarking about Snape's hair and trying to give Mulciber detention.

“Sort of.”

“That prat probably caused the whole thing,” she comments, scowling at her surroundings.

That gets an actual laugh out of you.

“I can’t disagree there,” you respond.

When she finishes drinking the contents of the goblet, and the sedative catches up with her, she stares holes into your frame before she goes under, as if struggling with something significant. This is the way she tends to be with mind altering potions in her system.

“Tell Tolsey to lock my flat until I get home,” she instructs you.

You nod. She isn’t done, though.

“Actually, you know what? You lock my flat, Augustine, and make yourself useful. Tell Corona to get the hell off my couch.”

You promise her that you will do all of these things, and tie her hair back, away from her face, the way she would if they regularly let her have ribbons here. You don’t think she’ll strangle herself, though. She might try to strangle one of them. Maybe that’s why they won’t let her have ribbons.

Once you’re finished, she asks for a mirror, and sniffs that you need to take hair care lessons from Narcissa after she gets back from her honeymoon. You nod again.

“When will you be home, Cal?” you ask her.

You don’t expect her to have a coherent answer, but you ask anyway. You always take these few moments that she’s only ten or so years behind the times and latch onto them like a leech. It’s probably not the healthiest coping mechanism, but it does the job when it needs to. You can’t come up with any better ones right now.

“When I’m finally done with ward rounds, so maybe next month if I get lucky and Christophe doesn’t catch me sneaking off,” she quips.

“Got it.”

“Don’t have any wild parties, yeah?”

“Do I look like Sirius Black to you?”

She rolls her eyes.

“You certainly hang out with the git often enough,” she complains. “For all I know, whatever he’s got is contagious.”

You laugh again so you don’t cry. If you’re hanging around Sirius Black, it must be at least 1980. _Less than a year and the both of them will be locked up._

What you need to do later is get falling-down drunk, so hammered that you have to call in sick to your dutiful swot of an assistant.

After the potion kicks in fully, and she falls asleep, you tell her that Ophelia is dead. You tell her that you ran into Dorcas Meadowes’s memorial on your way to work. You tell her that she’d get along well with your assistant, the stupid kid who takes his job entirely too seriously. You tell her that he’s taken over for her as far as preventing you from going fully round the bend is concerned. You tell her that you intend to come here to visit every day from now on (a blatant lie, but one that assuages the thrashing in your conscience).

By the time you finally leave, it’s fully dark, and Alice Longbottom has flung a Droobles Best Blowing Gum wrapper at your face. Calypso continues to snore silently.

While walking away from the hospital and toward a safe apparition point, you recall what Calypso said about Malfoy’s wife, and think back to the days leading up to her wedding. You’d been convinced then that life was utter shit, but really, it was merely getting started on that front.

At least the Order meeting had briefly been something to laugh about, before it became horrifying. Really, that should just be the motto for your entire existence.


	4. and is it worth the wait, all this killing time?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah yes, chapter four.  
> which i was supposed to post... five days ago?  
> real life got in the way, as it is wont to do.
> 
> i'm much more excited about the next few chapters, and determined to write them all up before september.  
> ('cause that's when school starts, and then i'll probably stop writing for a few months)

_**February 1978** _

The Order meeting, held in Mad-Eye Moody’s home this time around, goes along swimmingly by some approximation of the phrase. Nobody dies, at the very least.

While people get settled, and the remainder of the absentees catch their Portkeys from points unknown, Moody asks each of you if you’d like a cup of tea, barking directions to Fabian Prewett, who appears to be falling all over himself to do the man’s bidding.

He’s already done the job of conjuring enough chairs and tables to comfortably seat everyone in Moody’s sitting room.

“Acting as my house-elf won’t do you any favors at the academy,” Moody informs this overzealous idiot.

Prewett summons a container of tea leaves and shrugs.

“Got a right to try though, don’t I?”

Moody has nothing to say in retaliation. You suppose he’s given up.

“I need tea-leaves and sandwiches over here whenever you get the chance,” the other Prewett calls.

“So get ‘em your own damn self!”

You glance around to the people seated at your table - Corona, Julius, and Leo, and Calypso. The latter rises to grudgingly tend to Black’s bruises and broken nose.

“I should just leave you like this and teach you a lesson,” she comments, once she’s at their table. “Stop pinching your nose.”

“If I don’t, it’ll keep on bleeding,” he says, nigh incomprehensibly.

“If you want me to accidentally mend your fingers to your nasal bridge, go ahead and be my guest, Black.”

Evans snorts. Potter and Lupin shake their heads. Continuing to seem thoroughly miserable about the whole thing, Black obeys.

“Episkey.” Calypso murmurs, tapping the bridge of his nose with her wand. She extricates a jar of salve from her robes, and dabs a small volume on each of his bruises.

Then, she walks away before he can thank her. You pull out her chair, and share a good laugh with Corona and Leo over how clearly annoyed she is.  

“Done your good deed for the year?” you ask her.

She takes her seat, pulls out a textbook-sized stack of parchment notes, and makes a few addenda with her quill.

“I’m unsure as to whether enabling Black counts as a good deed.”

You’d brought her up to speed with the entire Portkey fiasco while he was still outside swearing loudly at Evans.

“Probably a better deed than letting him bleed out, Cal,” Corona says fairly.

“Oh, he wouldn’t have bled out, unfortunately. Nothing near severe enough for that.”

 _“Unfortunately,”_ you repeat, by way of concurring.

Fabian Prewett strolls over to your table with a tea tray, pours each of you a cup, and partitions out the sandwiches equally. However, beyond sharing a few words with Corona, he does not linger for long. He must be operating under the assumption that Slytherin is a catching disease.

Once he takes his leave, Calypso mutters something so derisive that Corona raises an eyebrow. 

“Ah, come on, Cal, calm down,” you smile faintly. “What would the Malfoys say if they heard you using such language?”

She takes a dainty sip of tea, and does not stoop so low as to answer you. You’re actually vaguely affronted. That’s barely a two out of ten on the scale of the usual insults you two fling at each other. Merlin, she needs to drag her sense of humor back from its holiday.

Corona scribbles a brief message on a stolen scrap of parchment, and passes it over to you, the corners of her mouth twitching as she fights the urge to grin.

_“She’s got a stick the size of a sapling jammed up her posterior.”_

You swallow a loud snort, and write out a response. _“She’s probably just tense about the wedding.”_

From what Calypso let slip to you, Narcissa has been sending owls to her flat each morning like clockwork, and venting about every detail, from the bridesmaids’ gowns down to the seating plan.

“Tell her you’re busy,” you’d advised Calypso. “It’s not even a lie.”

“Tell my dear friend I can’t lend a sympathetic ear in her time of need?”

Honestly, you could live a thousand years and never comprehend the way women think.

Once the last stragglers find seats, Professor Dumbledore extends his usual warm greetings to everyone present, and launches into a speech.

Evans confiscates Potter’s deck of muggle playing cards, so he, Pettigrew, and Black are forced to actually listen to what the old man has to say as opposed to playing… _Poke ‘em, was it? Poke it?_ Something like that.

The ancient fucks pay close attention to Dumbledore’s every word, as does the Vanguard of Moronic Gryffindors, for lack of anything better to do. Julius takes careful note of the proceedings, but you figure that’s more to keep up appearances than related to any love he has for the headmaster.

However, when Leo starts writing things down as if this might be a lesson, you start feeling a little self-conscious. Idly, you contemplate taking out a piece of parchment and pretending to give a damn. Certainly Calypso has enough of them on the table in front of her, but they’re all covered in cramped notes about analgesic potions and spells.

Corona, seated beside you, has her head propped up with one hand, and seems to be on the verge of falling asleep. At least someone has the right idea.

Meanwhile, Dumbledore elaborates on what your respective roles may be in an all-out battle, should hostilities with the Death Eater crowd come down to that. Very carefully, he divides everyone into one of two tentative groups: those allowed to fight, and those encouraged to stay at their regular posts.

Julius, of course, gets put into the second group, given his assignment at the Ministry. So does Corona, considering her ties to people over at the Third Eye. Calypso ends up there as well, and she is less than elated about these orders.

“I’d be one of the best fighters,” she mutters, vehemently punctuating a sentence with her quill and punching a hole through the parchment.

“That may be so, Miss Shacklebolt,” Dumbledore replies, addressing her as if she’s spoken at a conversational volume. “But aside from your betrothal to Rabastan Lestrange, you have training to comple.”

He doesn’t bother to add that she would blow her cover spectacularly by showing up to fight Death Eaters.

“Someone’s gotta patch us up later,” Corona says, patting her on the arm. “Y’know, and figure out which side is winning.”

Dumbledore hands out more assignments. You’re surprised to be put on the dueling team - you’ll be under Polyjuice, they tell you - but it’s just as well since sitting around never suited you in the slightest. As a former prefect to Slytherin house, you’re not particularly eager to hex any of your old charges, but you figure that it beats twiddling your thumbs.

“Leo, naturally, will be over on their side,” Dumbledore continues.

Calypso looks up sharply at that, gazing between him and the bearded man with a frown on her face.

“What’s that mean, exactly?” she asks. “Over on their side?”

You don’t understand it either, to be frank. Leo is quick to clarify.

“I’m set to take the Dark Mark on Thursday,” he reveals, to the shock of everyone save Corona. You guess working in Knockturn Alley has robbed her of the ability to be surprised. Either that, or she already knew. Both are possible. You’ll ask her later.

Even Julius raises a less-than-approving eyebrow at this piece of news.

“And you’re going to let him,” Calypso confirms, glaring at Professor Dumbledore, who nods.

You award him reluctant props for not shying away from criticism, or from Calypso, as the case may be. In the headmaster’s defense, Julius launches into a minor rant about how you need a spy planted firmly on the Dark Lord’s side, and how - out of all of you - Leo is probably the best man for the job, considering his history.

Poor Leo’s eyes widen at such high praise from Flint.

“Er, um, thank you,” he murmurs, scratching the back of his head, at a loss for more intelligent words.

Personally, you find the idea of punting Leo out the window and into a sea of Death Eaters without so much as a Cushioning Charm to break his fall to be nothing short of monstrous.

Little Leo, who bears a striking resemblance to a fourth year. The Office of Records might state his age as seventeen, but you beg to differ.

You remember your own sixth year, when this kid got caught unawares by a gang of Gryffindors, and consequently hexed six ways to Sunday. Instead of doing the logical thing and going to the hospital wing, he hobbled all the way from the Astronomy Tower down to the dungeons, and fell over a foot from the Slytherin common room.

Only after being repeatedly reassured that he would not be cursed again, did he agree to provide anyone with the names of his assailants: Abbott, Black, Potter, and Pettigrew.

So you saw him into Madam Pomfrey’s care, and subsequently went off with Severus Snape, Ignatius Selwyn, and Horatio Avery - a right dream team of offensive prowess - to avenge this flagrant insult, and to show these four-on-one orchestrating candy-asses how a proper duel should be conducted.

You fulfilled your objectives and more.

_(“Y’see, Abbott reckoned he saw Travers use dark magic on a muggleborn, and it’s not like we can take that lying down,” James Potter choked, between gagging on soap bubbles, in the wake of Horatio Scourgifying the git’s mouth out for the seventh time._

_“Funny how Abbott isn’t here at the moment to corroborate your story,” Horatio observed. “It’s almost like he already knows it’s a load of bunk.”_

_At that point, Peter Pettigrew turned tail and sprinted the short distance back to Gryffindor tower._

_“Travers is too daft to hex a goldfish, let alone a mudblood,” you growled, aiming a Leg-Locker Curse at Sirius Black before he could so much as consider following Pettigrew. “Try again.”_

_“So thick they can’t even lie well, this lot,” Ignatius cackled, throwing a hex at Black that Potter elected to jump in front of._

_Snape then hit them with some heretofore-unknown spell, opening up deep slashes on their faces that spattered the floor beneath with blood._

_Both Ignatius and Horatio exchanged awestruck glances at the sheer ability of this greasy fifth year. Given Horatio’s connections, you were certain the Dark Lord would be finding about this in short order._

_And though those fools deserved everything they got, you did have prefect duties to mind. Therefore, you were about to call “too far” and put a lid on the whole thing, when Snape devised the most scathing insult of the evening._

_“You do your house a grave disservice with your cowardice,” he sneered, finally muttering the countercurse once he’d managed to kick Potter in the side._

_Black rose to give Snape a piece of his mind, wand at the ready, but not before Horatio hit him with yet another hex._

_“Let’s get out of here,” you finally told your friends. “They’re not worth the aggravation.”_

_The next morning, Leo refused to go to class without either you or Calypso - both prefects and accomplished duelists - acting as some sort of escort.)_

In your estimation, he hasn’t changed much in the intervening years. If he doesn’t continue to write his parents thrice a week, you’ll eat Fabian Prewett’s pants.

Still, Julius has a valid point, painful as it is to acknowledge. You sigh deeply, and offer your own two knuts to the discussion.

“Flint’s probably right.”

This does not a thing to placate Calypso. She draws herself up to her full height, whips out her wand, and trains it on the headmaster. It’s a real testament to her reputation that not many people gasp.

For his part, Professor Dumbledore slowly raises his hands. Not to defend himself, you realize, but by way of yielding.

“If trying to duel me will make you feel better in any shape, form, or fashion, I encourage you to have at it, Miss Shacklebolt.”

He obviously does not know her well enough to realize that she will gladly hit him square in the face with the Cruciatus and hand in her resignation from the Order in the same breath. Nevertheless, once half the Order gets up to stand between her and Dumbledore, she seems to rethink her actions slightly. Her stance relaxes, but she does not lower her wand.

“Why him?” she demands. “Why not someone older, like me, or Augustine, or hell, even Julius?”

“You and Mr. Flint already have your own respective duties to tend to,” Dumbledore points out. “Mr. Greengrass has not shown up at one of Voldemort’s rallies in more than half a year. It would look rather odd for him to suddenly try to pledge unending loyalty.”

“That’s right,” you agree grudgingly.

Moody raises the tip of his wand to the base of Calypso’s spine, eliciting a visible flinch from the tall young woman.

“Come off it, Shacklebolt. I’ll have you disarmed and worse before the words are out of your mouth.”

She turns her head, ascertains that he is indeed serious, and still scowling, returns her wand to its resting place.

“Keep holding that twig anywhere near my person, Alastor, and I’ll snap it in twain.”

Moody barks out a laugh - confirming your suspicions that all aurors are sadomasochists - and holsters his wand.

Calypso sits down her hands folded neatly in her lap. You don’t exactly trust this, especially knowing how many wandless spells she can fire off in Igbo, but judging from her expression, she seems to be finished making any attempts on Dumbledore’s life.

The meeting wears on.

Julius debriefs everyone present as to what the Slytherin five has learned, which is not very much when you get down to it.

However, his revelations that there now exist Death Eaters outside your house, and more damningly, within Gryffindor, inspire a general uproar amongst the students, particularly the ones in red and gold.

“Flint has to be off his bloody rocker,” Pettigrew remarks, through a mouthful of cucumber sandwich. Makes the rest of them seem downright graceful, that one. Evans shushes him, and gestures back to Julius.

“I assure you, Mr. Pettigrew, that these are the facts as I know them.”

“If he’s right - _and I’m not saying he is, alright?_ ” Black exclaims, to quell the betrayal on Pettigrew’s face. “But, anyway, if he is right, I’m willing to put ten galleons on Bulstrode.”

Potter nods, satisfied with this assessment. “Ten galleons it is, then. I’ll front fifteen more.”

“Assuming that’s the case, I volunteer to drown this embarrassment to Godric in the Great Lake, free of charge,” Fabian Prewett offers.

Without missing a beat, Dumbledore chastises him soundly, maintaining that he will do no such thing to any of the students at Hogwarts, for as long as he remains the headmaster.

Moody turns to recognize Julius once more.

“You were saying, Flint?”

“I believe our next great opportunity to acquire information will come next Saturday.”

“What’s next Saturday?” Prewett asks. You silently wonder if he ever has anything insightful to say. His brother, seated next to him, elbows him hard enough to knock the wind out of him.

“Malfoy’s wedding, you numpty. Or did you forget about your invite?”

It takes you a second or two to retrieve your jaw from the carpeting. “ _Your family_ got invited?”

“Malfoy invited every pureblood in the country, didn’t he?” Gideon Prewett observes. “Save the Weasleys and the Potters, obviously.”

“You’re related to the Weasleys by marriage, Prewett.”

“Not our fault, we didn’t tell Molly to get hitched at the end of seventh year. ‘Sides, it’s not like any of us really _want_ to go this stupid thing,” he tells you. “Watching a pompous arsehole and a prissy bint exchange vows is up there with watching paint dry, in my opinion.”

Calypso glares daggers at him.

“That’s one of my dearest friends you’re talking about, you blood-traitor bastard.”

“You flatter me,” he snorts. “So, Shacklebolt, were you talking about the pompous arsehole or the prissy bint?”

You don’t even have to incline your head in her direction to tell that she’s drawn her wand for the second time this afternoon. Julius’s diplomatic smile turns into a tight grimace. Corona puts her head in her hands. Leo shoots you one of his _“do something”_ glances.

You’re not sure what he expects you to do. If you try to snatch the wand from Calypso, she’ll more than likely burn your hands off.

“Do lower your wand, Healer Shacklebolt, lest you give someone an actual injury,” Julius warns.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Calypso hisses through gritted teeth.

You were wrong about her being made for Lestrange the younger, you realize.

Your best friend should do the proper thing, turn around, and ask Sirius Black to marry her, so they can be overreactive morons together. Even he’s staring at her like she’s made yet another major faux-pas today.

“Put that thing away before you poke someone’s eye out!” Corona shouts at her, before presenting Prewett with a rude hand gesture.

“And, for the record, Cal’s right about you. If I didn’t want her to face time in Azkaban for Cruciating someone in an Auror’s home, I’d tell her to have at you.”

Calypso crosses her arms over her chest. “What makes you think I would deign to resort to an Unforgivable for this one?”

“You’re usually about to resort to an Unforgivable, dear.”

She can’t argue about that without telling a boldfaced untruth. Stupefy is right passe in her book.

“Well, she’s more ‘n’ welcome to try whatever she desires after we’re done here,” Prewett fires back.

“I’ll remember you said that in the future.”

However, getting reprimanded by Corona Yaxley of all people must have had the desired effect, because Calypso deposits her wand on the table in front of her with a clatter, and makes no further fuss.

The tension in the room remains thicker than the snow falling back in Hogsmeade.

“Now that all potential grievances have been aired, I gather that each of you will be in attendance,” Dumbledore says to your group.

Julius nods respectfully. You sort of want to know who died and made him your representative.

“Most assuredly, headmaster.”

“Me and Cal are bridesmaids,” Corona pipes up. “And Jules is the equivalent on the groom’s side, whatever they’re called.”

“Groomsmen, Miss Yaxley,” he says smoothly.

Everyone vaguely in the know - all the purebloods, mostly - turns to gawk at you and Leo, wondering why you were snubbed in such an obvious manner. Your younger brother, Jude, asked you the very same question earlier in the week, but unlike him, you do not owe any of these people an explanation, so you do not provide one.

In your case, it’s because you’re neither a Death Eater, nor in possession of valuable enough connections to warrant Lucius Malfoy publicly acknowledging your existence. In Leo’s case, it’s… probably a little of the same thing, come to think of it. Given Corvus’s apparent incompetence, harboring a single Travers in one’s wedding party is disgraceful enough.

“Think You-Know-Who will make an appearance?” someone asks.

“Nope,” you respond. “Social calls where he isn’t the focus of all attention are of little interest to him.”

Corona stirs her highball glass, full to the brim with firewhiskey and tonic, and giggles in agreement.

_Where did she get that? Does she carry Ogden’s OId on her person at all times? Or did she flirt the location of Moody’s liquor cabinet out of him?_

“Lord Voldemort tends to be a self-centered twit at times,” Calypso quips.

Wincing slightly, you reflect that this makes two out of five from your crowd either too brave or too stupid to afford the Dark Lord proper deference.

 _“Understatement,”_ Corona coughs.

You can’t count a single person in the room who doesn’t laugh at the pair of them, including Julius. Dumbledore himself performs that vaguely amused eye-twinkle maneuver.

Without so much as glancing in your direction, Calypso goes on, “Augustine, do refrain from choking on your saliva at my choice of words. It’s high time we stop addressing him like we’re a pack of Death Eaters, at least when we’re not among his followers.”

You figure that allowing a certain measure respect to the man who can likely kill all of your families with the snap of a finger can’t hurt, but enjoy not having your balls hexed off too much to raise an objection.

“Spoken like a true Shacklebolt,” Moody says gruffly, clapping her on the back.

You recall the first week of seventh year, when you, she, and Corona were poised on the edge of joining the Death Eaters. You silently marvel that the tables have so clearly turned and done ostentatious backflips in the sixteen or so months since then.

If you hadn’t watched it happen firsthand, you wouldn’t believe it for a second.

At long last, the general meeting comes to an end.

Dumbledore retires to another room of the house to consult with his Council of Old Fucks. Half-heartedly, Evans returns Potter’s deck of cards to him.

“Oi, Potter! Count me in for this round?” Fabian Prewett yells, pulling a chair over to their table.

Potter winks at him, and starts dealing the cards.

“The more, the merrier. Sure you don’t want to play, Moony?”

Lupin shakes his head. “Quite sure.”

You keep making a point to befriend this guy, putting aside the rumors of lycanthropy. He seems to be the only soul in that group, other than possibly Evans, with more than nine working brain cells. You’ll buy him a drink the next time you see him.

At the moment, though, you have bigger fish to fry. You rise from your chair, tuck it in, and tap Leo on the shoulder.

“Can I get a word?”

He trips over a table leg in his haste to join you. What an unmitigated fool.

“Always, Augustine!”

Gesturing away from the gathering of the Order, you lead him outside to the backyard.

You note that Moody’s garden is infested with gnomes, the grass pockmarked and humming with underground activity. It’ll have to suffice. Where else can you take Leo to have this talk? You cast a few perfunctory spells to ensure that no one else can listen in, should they have the inclination.

“So, Travers,” you begin, struggling to keep your tone light. “Nice bit of responsibility you’ve been handed, yeah?”

“I guess?” Leo replies, more question than answer.

You put an arm around his skinny shoulders, though you don’t know whether you’re trying to reassure yourself or him with the gesture.

“Scared?”

“Not really.”

You search him for any hint of deceit. Then again, if he’s supposed to be some paragon of espionage, you shouldn’t find one. For what it’s worth, you don’t.

“Is that so?” you ask, continuing to size him up.

“Nope,” he maintains. “Probably should be, but I’m not.”

“Any reason why?”

You have to hear his rationale for embarking on a suicide mission.

“I want to do my share to help the Order,” he explains. “And to do that, I can’t be afraid. Professor Dumbledore wouldn’t let me do anything really dangerous, right?”

You could throttle him. You could throttle the headmaster. Each of them needs a good curse to the head, and you’re almost sorry you didn’t tell Calypso to go through with her earlier intentions.

You lack the backbone to disabuse Leo of this notion. Staring him in the eye, you cannot bear to destroy whatever delusions enable him to plunge forward.

“Maybe not,” you remark neutrally.

“Also, Sev and Reggie and Barty will look out for me,” he smiles. “They’re some of the best mates to have around.”

You don’t bother to suggest that they’ll only be _“the best mates to have around”_ for as long as Leo can maintain this farce. The second anyone suspects enough to hit him with a working amount of Legilimency or Veritaserum, those three will all but assuredly turn their backs on him. As they very well should.

You stare straight ahead and count gnome-holes to keep your temper in check.

“You don’t seem to have much faith in me, you know,” Leo says, with a nervous laugh.

Oh, how wrong he is.

At this point, he may be one of the few people your faith extends to, if only because doubting him means accepting how slim his odds are. You shake your head. You must be squeezing his shoulders in a vice grip, but you feel as if he’ll disappear if you loosen up.

“I’m just worried is all.”

“Don’t worry then,” he begs you. “I swear I’m only half as stupid as you think.”

Little Leo. Little Leo with his unkempt blond hair and giant cow eyes. Just look at him now. You narrowly blink away tears before they gather.

Here, in Moody’s buzzing garden, you do manage to divulge at least a portion of what you think. Bravery may be more of a Gryffindor quality, but he has to be the most valiant young man you’ve ever met, equal to nearly the entire damn Order. When you get right down to it, you’re bloody proud to call him a friend.

You still want to curse him insensate, as you would any other friend in his position. You keep that part to yourself.

“You really mean it, Augustine?” he stammers, utterly gobsmacked by your outburst.

You slug him in the arm to bring him back to terra firma.

“Would I lie to you?”

“You told me I had a fighting chance of passing Arithmancy last year.”

“You _did_ have a fighting chance of passing Arithmancy last year,” you insist. “At least until you had an anxiety attack and puked on the exam sheet.”

After that, there isn’t much more to say to Leo. The two of you return inside, only to notice a young woman at your table, Dorcas Meadowes. She appears to be halfway through a minor argument with Calypso.  

Meadowes deposits a small goblet on the table, atop Calypso’s notes. “Drink that, Trainee Shacklebolt.”

Wait, _trainee?_ Did she actually go there?

More importantly, given how touchy Calypso been all day, why isn’t she more furious about such discourtesy?

Like Leo once stated in fewer words, Julius is second only to the likes of the Minister, Dumbledore, the Dark Lord, and God himself in terms of importance, as a liaison between Law Enforcement and the Minister’s advisors. Yet even he refers to Calypso as “Healer” to denote respect.

Then, you notice the wand-and-bone insignia on Meadowes’s robes. Oh, that’s right.

If Dorcas Meadowes was four years above you in school, she must be at, or near, the end of training, making Calypso her legitimate subordinate.

Learn something new every day, you decide.

“I fail to see why my state of mind warrants a Calming Draught,” Calypso tells her, pushing the goblet away.

Meadowes is nonplussed. “Aside from the fact that you tried to curse the headmaster?”

“He’s putting a child in harm’s way. Do you expect me to take such action lying down?”

Leo protests with something like, _“I’m not a child, I’m seventeen!"_

Calypso acts as if she didn’t hear the exclamation, sullenly regarding the woman in front of her.

“Yes, I do, considering this is not your call to make, Trainee,” Meadowes responds evenly. “Or, at the very least, to pose your arguments in a more dignified fashion than letting your wand do the talking.”

Calypso frowns, twirling aforementioned wand beside the goblet, about to vanish it. “Laws of informed consent being what they are, if I refuse t--”

“You know as well as I do that informed consent goes out the window the moment anyone with a wand presents a demonstrable danger to themselves or anyone else, which you have.”

Finally, someone with the clout to tell Calypso off. When she has no biting retort, Meadows presses the issue further.

“We can do this the simple way, if you wish,” she remarks. “That, or I can testify under Veritaserum, get a court order, and have you miss a few days of work.”

Calypso’s eyes dart back and forth, surveying her surroundings. Locating no clandestine escape route, she puts the goblet to her lips, tips it back, and drains about half its contents, sneering at either the taste or the situation.

“Must you be so incorrigible, Healer Meadowes?”

Meadowes gives her a small grin. “Such is the nature of my profession. When was the last time you slept more than three hours?”

“The day before yesterday."

“Their time or ours?”

Calypso extricates a silver pocket watch, and a gilded hourglass pendant with a wind-up tab on the top from her robes. She consults both closely before speaking again.

“Their time, obviously.”

“As for ours?” Meadowes asks.

“Not more than seven days ago.”

Deflating underneath the healer’s unwavering stare, Calypso downs the remainder of her potion. Her expression relaxes by a bare centimeter.

Meadowes claps once, taps the goblet with her wand, and watches it disappear, all with an air of satisfaction.

“I’ll inform Christophe and Pearson that you’re taking the evening sick.”

“Is that truly necessary?”

“So they know to send you home if they see you in Spell Damage tonight? I’d say it is.”

She gets up, and walks away, bound in the direction of the Vanguard of Gryffindor Morons. You mentally issue her your deepest condolences.

“Nice time-turner, Cal,” Corona says, once Meadowes is out of earshot. “Who’d you kill for it?”

Hold everything for just a second. That’s a time-turner?

You know that certain straight-O students got them starting in third year to take more classes than should have been humanly possible, but you thought that Calypso handed hers in after NEWTs.

“What’re you doing with one of those?” you want to know.

Calypso shakes her head, and refuses to answer, swearing up and down that she isn’t allowed to tell you.

“Proposition sixty-four,” Julius mutters.

Corona rolls her eyes, and finishes her drink.

“Could you relate that in English, Jules? We’re not all fluent in Ministry.”

“Proposition sixty-four,” he repeats. “Which was generated by the Department of Wellness after a public health emergency, and passed by Wizengamot in 1973, gives prospective healers the power to utilize time-altering devices as a means of shortening their training by a sizable margin.”

“That’s correct," Calypso admits. "Though you’d do well to mind that such matters are supposed to be kept under the strictest confidence.”

“No worries,” Corona grins, casting a refilling charm on her glass. “I won’t tell your man that you’re really forty or anything.”

An hour later, all of you go your separate ways.

You turn Calypso’s favorite threat on her, and promise to hex her off her balcony if she doesn’t catch a nap tonight.

“You couldn’t hex me if your life depended on it,” she snorts.

“Try me.”

You apparate back to an empty house.

Nick’s stuck at the Ministry, up to his hairline in paperwork. Your mother and father have gone over to the Averys' for Sunday dinner. You holler for Cooby, who is nowhere to be found. Maybe he did the understandable thing and shuffled off this mortal coil.

_Alas, poor Cooby, I knew him, Horatio._

Unsatisfied by the tiny sandwiches you scarfed down at Moody’s, your stomach lets out a deafening growl. You ransack the kitchen cupboard for something palatable and instant. The closest thing you find is oatmeal. Neither palatable nor instant, but impossible for anyone to fuck up.

How did mankind get by before the advent of women or house-elves? You dump an entire dish of sugar into the runny oatmeal to make it edible. You light a few candles with your wand, and take your dinner in the deserted dining room.

That’s when Cooby finally decides to totter over. You forbid him from bowing, lest he aggravate his arthritis.

“Would Master Augustine like something to eat?”

You quash the momentary impulse to locate your filthiest pair of underwear, fling it at his face, and relieve him of his servitude. He more than likely was not trying to spite you. He has greater reason to despise your brother, anyway.

“No, Cooby, I’m fine.”

“Is Master Augustine certain?”

“Yeah. Think I’ll go out for a while.”

You put your cloak back on, and stroll outside to your broom closet. It’s an excellent evening for flying, with the waning gibbous moon hanging in the sky like a beacon. You kick off and accelerate skyward. You brake only when you’re a hundred feet in the air, high above all the sprawling manors, closer to outer space than the ground.

Spring holidays haven’t arrived. It’s not like you can race anyone yet. Maybe Horatio Avery, but then you’d have to interact with his parents and yours, a colossal headache on a good night. This is most definitely not a good night.

 _How would you act, if you were Leo?_ you ask yourself.

Your Catholic upbringing slams into you with the mercy of a well-aimed bludger. You contemplate the New Testament, rather amazed that you can remember any of this nonsense.

_“Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me.”_

However, remove the latter bit conceding, _“...nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”_

You don’t want some nonexistent god’s will to be done as much as your own. You are an impertinent bastard.

Were you in Leo’s place, you would have paled in the face of this burden, jumped on your broom, and flown clear to France. Let someone else do it. Not your problem, not in a century.

How on earth did you manage to get over that knee-jerk instinct to save your ass for long enough to join the Order of the Phoenix?

 _This is not where you belong_ , you reflect belatedly.

And daft Travers, who hasn’t even finished school? He belongs in the Order less. Someone ought to write his mother and tell her what he’s getting up to.

As much of a coward as you are, you would exchange places for him. You’d shove him out of harm’s way, and accept your inevitable doom as the least of all possible evils. Not gladly, your sense of self-preservation is too paramount. But you’d do it. You would take the hit.

You scan the stars for signs of a higher power, to inconclusive results. You lower your gaze.

_Thy will be done._

By the time you’ve finished agonizing and fly back home, everyone is asleep. Finally a spot of good luck, no one to reprimand you for staying out late.

Slumber eludes you, no matter how many times you punch your pillow like it owes you gold. In the morning, Nick takes one glance at your prodigious eye-bags, and has a healthy laugh at your expense.

He musses your hair, continuing to chortle, “Working hard, or hardly working?”

You perform a cost-benefit analysis on the idea of punching him in the face, and decide it’s too early to entertain a physical brawl.

“That’s my line,” you whine.

You get out of bed, and dress to meet the day. It’s the asscrack of dawn. You have fifteen minutes to get to Gringotts.

You elect to skive off work at the last second.

You apparate to that old church in Godric’s Hollow, the only all-wizard parish for about two hundred miles. Religion may be a group delusion, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Your mum would beam ear-to-ear to see you here, as would your sister. 

You confirm with a perfunctory look-around that nobody you actually know and respect is present, and duck into the mostly empty chapel. You grab a pew in the first row, right in front of the Cross. You squeeze your eyes shut, fingering the goblin-made beads, reacquainting yourself with their familiar weight. Across a gulf of five and a half years, the appropriate words come back to you as if they never left.

The crucifix etches a mark into your palm. You remind yourself to begin with the Apostles’ Creed.

_“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth…”_

_It’s a sin to lie on the altar, Augustine,_ the honest part of your mind chimes in.

Yes, you stopped believing during your second year at Hogwarts, but that’s how the prayer goes. Everyone has to put their trust in something during their darkest hour. How else would they function?

You resume your intonation in full force.

Candles hover and glimmer several feet above your head.

It takes you half an hour to get through the entire rosary, mostly because you are not speeding through the ordeal. You take it nice and slow, the way you did before you started school, and you truly thought God had time for your problems. This bloke in the sky is going to listen up. You’ll make sure of it, for Leo. He’s close enough to being saintly that God should take a break from his ineffable machinations to intercede on his behalf.

Storing your mother’s rosary back in your robes, you do another quick once-over of the chapel. Still no one whose opinion you care about.

You contemplate saying the Stations of the Cross, being that it is Lent, but conclude that you’ve displayed sufficient piety for the day. Sufficient piety for the year, really. Jesus might keel over and die again if you stay longer.

Furthermore, if that unceasing nag of a squib, Father Gene, asks whether you wish to attend Confession today, you’ll chuck a bible at him. You’ll confess your numerous sins on your death bed, and not a minute sooner.

Returning to the comparatively simple routine of Diagon Alley is downright reassuring. A harried witch damn near shoves you into the back door of Flourish and Blotts, and you bite back the urge to thank her. The goblins glower even more than normal when you get to work, and you bite back the urge to thank them as well.

You ride your broom in dizzying circles until you’re too exhausted to walk straight, after you get back home. Your mother clucks at how pale you are over supper, declares that you must be taking ill, and doses you with Pepper-Up Potion.

Your eyes water. Steam pours from your ears. Merlin’s beard, it’s even more awful than you remember.

That evening, you manage to catch a few hours of uneasy sleep, until a nightmare yanks you back into consciousness. You awaken with the alacrity of roadkill.

You have a similar problem the next night.

You watch Leo die, his ruse discovered. Nothing you say or do alters the outcome in the slightest. You scream for the wizards in masks to take you instead, that this was your idea, that you deserve it more. They ignore you.

You fire a dozen protective spells, but none of them prevent the Killing Curse from reaching its target.

You bear witness to his lifeless, unseeing face up close.

One of the Death Eaters  - Corvus Travers, to add insult to injury -  shoots the Mark high up above his house.

Too anxious to pray, you reckon that sleep is overrated. You’ll take a leaf from Calypso’s book and stay up for the rest of your life.

That afternoon, she dourly informs you that she cannot rescue you from these terrors, as much as she’d like to remove you from her front doorstep.

No, she cannot provide you with Dreamless Sleep. She does not receive prescription privileges until her second year at St. Mungo’s. Even then, all of her scripts have to be approved by the attending healer.

“Can’t you just nick a vial or two from the apothecary?”

You’re ready to get down on your knees and start begging. Her face softens for a few seconds. She puts a hand on your shoulder.

“Steal a class 2 controlled potion and get thrown out of my program?” she asks, still evidently unable to fathom the sheer stupidity of your request. “I’m sorry, Augustine, but not for all the gold in Gringotts.”

She even asks you to stay, tells you that she can probably get you a Calming Draught.

But you don't want to be numb.

You want to sleep.

You excuse yourself.

Julius obviously cannot help you, and given how morally upstanding he is, it’s not like he actually would. You don’t ask.

Finally, Corona, with her questionable connections to the underbelly of the entire universe, succeeds in scoring you a full cauldron’s worth of the purple substance, which she hand delivers to your house. You could kiss her, but such a gesture would probably give her ideas.

You hand her the requisite hundred galleons.

She looks around furtively until you assure her that no one else is around for the time being, not even your unpleasant house-elf.

“Careful, Augustine,” she cautions. “There’s a reason it’s controlled.”

You shrug. This is not your area of expertise. “Which is?”

“It’s highly addictive, ‘specially if you drink it every night.”

You don’t bother to tell her that was exactly what you were planning to do.

Whatever. Once or twice a week will suffice. 

You stow the cauldron under your bed - you do share this room, after all - and cast no less than twenty concealing enchantments upon it. That particular spot might as well be more Unplottable than Hogwarts by the time you’re through. 

The next morning, you revel in the first full night's sleep you've gotten in days.

Leo owls you on Thursday to inform you that he survived the Dark Mark ceremony. You pile kippers onto your toast, hungry for the first time this week. Another owl arrives from your sister. You unroll the parchment and laugh at the message.

_Augustine,_

_You said OWLs were easy, you lying berk!_ _I've been studying for the last nine hours, and I don't think I'm any closer to understanding Transfiguration._  
_See you this weekend!_  
_Can I borrow your broom on Sunday?_

_\- Dymphna_

You dash off a resounding "hell no" and send the message with your barn owl, smiling, in spite of yourself.


	5. and there was no one left to speak for me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is probably going to be the second-to last chapter i post before i start at college again. the last will be narcissa's wedding.  
> after that, the chapter schedule is going to get way more sporadic. we're talking as much as 2-3 months between updates here, although hopefully not. i'll have a better idea of things once i get through my first week of classes.
> 
> moreover, i'm also almost done with chapter 6, and then after that, there's going to be significantly less reflection and significantly more dueling, at least in the chapters that take place during the first war.
> 
> originally, this "present day" chapter was going to be somewhat different, but then a friend of mine asked a good question - "what if durmstrang order members?" - and i sort of ran with it.

**April 1990**

You do not have to be here, solemn and rain-wet, today. You do not have to be here, ever. However, a vow is a vow, even if the person to whom you pledged it was too deceased to make it unbreakable. The cemetery in Portree has always been a subdued place, all marble and stone, with barely any foliage. Unlike muggles, who place garish leavings on graves at the drop of a knut, your sort never lent much credence to such displays.

Besides, wizards and witches can set their memorials to disappear within a few hours, which many do. These hallowed grounds have been set aside solely for pureblood and other renowned families. 

Therefore, many blood traitors have been interred in its confines.

The easiest way to pay one’s respects to a family member that got disinherited is to conjure a five minute wreath, hope no one has seen you, and apparate on the spot. You’ve seen a few of your friends do it.

Your bum knee protests each step you take, shot through with the pain of the damp weather. You lean heavily on the cane you’d bought at Twilfitt and Tatting’s - solely an accoutrement, you’d told Jude - though you’re unsure who was fooling whom then. You cast a mild shield charm to protect yourself from the falling rain. At least there are few mourners this time around.

There are other sites you could visit, many others. Two young men, old friends of yours, killed by Death Eaters, and less than a year apart. There is another grave you could spend hours contemplating, though you’d more than likely have a nervous breakdown behind such action. You give it a wide berth, sprinting past its row even though you can no longer sprint properly.

Besides, the 15th of April is sacrosanct and reserved for one person.

So you keep stumbling along the slippery path, further into these burial grounds. The trees, many still bare, grow more frequent along the way.

Your foot slips in mud, and you practically have to grab hold of a headstone to keep from toppling over. Mouth quivering, you read over the inscription, hoping you haven’t aggravated any ghosts. As it turns out, the final resting place of a random dead Macnair has broken your fall. Probably the first benign act anyone in that line has ever performed.

You make a left turn at the gigantic statue that Abraxas Malfoy had forced the staff to erect as an effigy of his father, and make a beeline for a willow tree a hundred or so yards away. That has always been your landmark when you needed to find her. It was certainly garish enough that you figured she’d be mocking it silently were she truly _here._

Of course, you’re thinking of the other her, the one for whom it will always be 1980, as opposed to 1975, the her you were jokingly going steady with for a while.

As it turns out, someone already stands in front of her tombstone, a woman clad in black silk dress robes, with a dark veil covering her face.

The few who see her hush, even the rain rendered quieter around her. It is a silence that hears itself, awful and beautiful, and when she turns to face you, her skin emits a seemingly unearthly glow.

The first thought that comes to mind is an image of the Madonna, though you’ve rarely seen a statue of her where she did not hold a child in her arms.

You close the distance between yourself and this woman with a swallowed wince, taking pains to rely less on your cane all the while. You do not want her to think of you as weak, or in any way unworthy of her presence, but you are graceless as a troll compared to her. Heart pounding in your chest, and your arm numb, you wave faintly to her in recognition. This is one of Corona's maternal cousins, certainly one of the few whom you'd properly gotten to know.

it helps that she'd been in the Order of the Phoenix. in fact, if your memory serves you right, she'd joined first and then convinced her younger cousin to follow suit.

_(The two of them took tea together in a hole-in-the-wall shop at the end of Hogsmeade, and discussed politics, a silencing charm cast on the booth. As two of Corona’s closest friends, you and Calypso had been invited to sit with them._

_“Can they be trusted?” this woman asked._

_Considering you had been rendered incapable of words at the very sight of her, you couldn’t answer. After Corona swore up and down that you and Cal would sooner die than tell any of her secrets (Cal maybe, but all respects to heaven, you preferred it here), the woman introduced herself as Kateryna Davydenko, one of Corona’s relatives.  
_

_You and Calypso exchanged glances._

_“One of her veela relatives, no doubt,” you muttered, in awe of her resplendence._

_Calypso muttered back that if you stared any harder, your eyes would pop out of your head, and kicked you square in the shin as a means of rendering you rational again._

_Kateryna continued to talk to Corona as if neither of you were there, through a heavy accent that you would later learn was Ukrainian._

_“Though his followers are easily swayed, Voldemort has no love for our kind, probably for that same reason.”_

_Corona shrugged and poured Kateryna more tea. “The Dark Lord doesn’t mind me much. Even said he had a place for another Yaxley, especially one like me, in his organization. Seemed to think I’d be useful at distracting the enemy.”_

_Corona’s paternal half-brother, Clarence, had joined the Death Eaters two years ago. He’d told her once that by renouncing her shameful quarter-veela mother, by helping him and Voldemort’s other followers usher in a pureblood utopia, she could at last atone for her slightly questionable bloodline._

_“You could be very useful,” Clarence had insisted, and Corona had agreed._

_You’d been there in the common room, revising for Astronomy, when he’d said it. This had been back when you also were ready to take the Dark Mark the minute you turned seventeen. So you’d empathized. Sort of._

_In June of 1977, in this tea shop, however, Kateryna seemed determined to show her cousin a different set of writing on the wall._

_“Do not be so stupid as to think Voldemort’s anti-half-breed rhetoric extends not to our kind purely because we are attractive,” she went on, derisively. “Decades ago, we made this same mistake with another such wizard, and just look how few of us remain. And most of us are half or less.”_

_“We did?” Corona blinked._

_Kateryna looked as if she could not believe her ears._

_“What in the name of Merlin do they teach you in History?”_

_Corona wracked her brains. “Not much, really. All I do in Binns’s class is sleep.”_

_At Kateryna’s expression of muted anger, she pointed to you and Calypso, and added “well, so does everyone else! Only person who maybe takes notes there is Cal.”_

_Kateryna inclined her head at Calypso, by way of requesting that she speak._

_“Would you be so kind as to bring her up to speed with what took place during the war?”_

_In return, Corona rolled her eyes, reached over, and flicked Kateryna square in the forehead._

_“Of course I know about the war, it’s not like I live under a rock,” she replied, sounding affronted. “But we won, right? Grindelwald’s rotting all the way over in Nurmengard.”_

_“Did your classes touch on the Accord of Varna?” Kateryna asked evenly, her silver eyes seeming then more like sword tips than slices of starlight._

_Corona shook her head. “Not really?”_

_Kateryna let out what you figured were a motley collection of Slavic swear words. This, somehow, made her even more attractive to you, if such a thing were even possible._

_“The Accord of Varna was an official treaty of noninterference generated in occupied territory, between Grindelwald’s forces and certain creatures recognized as having human or near-human intelligence,” she began, sounding as if she’d swallowed a bug at the final part. “Centaurs and veela were amongst them. As long as we were not hostile to the soldiers, they would not be hostile to us. In fact, if we voluntarily chose to fight on their side, we were to be rewarded.”_

_“Right,” Corona nodded. “I reckon I remember Binns covering something like that.”_

_“But of course, once Grindelwald had the manpower to make his movement an all-wizarding crusade, they turned on us. Allegedly, it was because a few of our number had allied against him,” Kateryna went on. “Since he’d always preached a certain type of wizard supremacy that was difficult to trust, some, like my mother, fled to countries that were actively fighting him. Not to join them, but to hide. Those who ran survived the war. Those who did not...”_

_She trailed off. And lost for words for once in her life, Corona did not bother to ask any further questions._

_“Oh,” she murmured, finally._

_“Therefore, pardon me if I distrust anything this new Dark Lord has to say about us. He strikes me as being even less merciful than Grindelwald, which is not something I say lightly.”_

_Corona neither confirmed nor denied that statement. It wasn’t as if she definitively could. She wasn’t around during the latter’s reign of terror. None of you had been; you’d all only grown up in the aftermath, and none of your guardians had been particularly fond of talking about those years. Even the professors were tight-lipped about it._

_“What should I do then?”_

_“It’s your life, you’re of age, you can make your own decisions.”_

_“But you’ve always given me advice before,” Corona pointed out. “What are you doing?”_

_“That I have,” Kateryna admitted. “As for me, I find it difficult to stay neutral. The people who do nothing do exactly that - nothing.”_

_“I see,” Corona replied, trying to act as calm as her cousin._

_Kateryna exhaled sharply and stared at you and Calypso, as if assessing you, and then glanced back to her cousin. Then, Corona offered a few apologetic phrases to you two, and you knew that you were being dismissed. The last snippet of conversation you caught from the booth before Corona re-cast the silencing charms to exclude you was Kateryna saying, “...but such action should not be taken lightly.”_

_“She’s going to join the Order,” Calypso pronounced, while the two of you walked through a fairly unpopulated area of Hogsmeade, amid your own spells to avoid detection._

_You shoved your hands into your pockets and gave a noncommittal grunt of acknowledgment._

_“Yeah, probably,” you agreed. “What about you, though?”_

_“I’ve already made you aware of my feelings on this issue, Greengrass.”_

_Unfortunately, she had. And unfortunately, with a sinking feeling in your abdomen, you had a vague idea of where you too were going to wind up.)_

Here, in the present, Kateryna draws back the fabric of her sleeve, and extends to you her ivory-colored hand, which you raise to your mouth and kiss.

You do your best to smile. “Good afternoon, Kateryna.”

She lowers her veil a centimeter or two, exposing much of her gleaming face, and a few ringlet curls the color of wheat. Observing how much she physically resembles Corona - luminescence aside - hits like an Impediment jinx to the gut.

“Is it really a good afternoon, Augustine?” she asks, coolly.

However, Corona had no accent to speak of, and their mannerisms are different enough that everything stops hurting for the moment.

“I suppose not.”

You could say a prayer, but you don’t. It’s not as if Corona ever believed in anything but charm and cunning in the first place. You and Kateryna regard the gravestone without speaking, or even moving. The last time you two ran into each other here, about seven years ago, she’d confessed how guilty she felt about ever getting Corona mixed up in the Order.

There are no such proclamations today, only silence.

_Corona Angelique Yaxley  
15 April 1959 - 29 December 1980_

“Happy birthday,” you whisper into to the air, trying to imagine a thirty-year old Corona blowing out a few dozen birthday candles. Knowing her, she’d dispense with the pastries altogether and insist on thirty-one birthday shots of firewhiskey.

You should have brought some to pour on the ground. How could that detail have eluded you? Oh, well. You conjure a passable bouquet of poppies to leave in the grass, and Kateryna tilts her head to one side, clearly confused.

“I thought she preferred tulips most,” she muses.

Then, you explain to her the muggle tradition, which more than a few Order members adopted, many of them being muggleborn, of depositing poppies on the graves of fallen soldiers. She seems to understand, though she does not elect to join you.

“I’ll leave the tulips, then.”

Of course, being ace at Transfiguration means that she wordlessly creates an intricate arrangement that wouldn’t look out of place in that florist’s shop a few miles back.

Once she’s got the armful of flowers, she pulls a piece of her hair from her head, taps it with her wand, and transforms it into several long, golden threads that she uses to bind the collection of tulips (and other blooms) together. She sets down this wreath beside your poppies.

“You knew her better,” Kateryna admits, surveying her handiwork. “Do you think she’d like it?”

“I think she’s mad I forgot the firewhiskey.”

She spares you a disbelieving glance. “You would have brought firewhiskey?”

“We’re talking about Corona, after all. How could I not?”

In response, Kateryna throws back her head and laughs, free and unencumbered. When she does, it’s almost as if the skies clear for an instant, unable to muster up proper retaliation to her joy.

You feel it too, the ripple of mirth that exists solely to spite the desolation around it.

Continuing to float on the secondhand waves of Kateryna’s emotion, and reflecting that you spend far more time in this cemetery than is advisable, you ask her to accompany you to an inn not far from here.

Not for any improper reasons, just because they serve hearty food and heartier drinks. You two could use a little of both. Corona would laugh herself insensate to watch you scramble forth with a woman on your arm and nearly splinch yourself. You hope she’s watching.

And once you’re there, you grab a table near the doors, and while away the time with small talk.

“You’re not playing Quidditch for the Wasps anymore?”

You point to your bad leg. “Not with this injury, Kat. Got cursed too badly a few years ago.”

“What a shame.”

You shrug. It had been at the time, you suppose, but you’d also been tired of punting the Quaffle around. So much of your old life lost its allure ten years ago. You played because it was expected of you, because you were slightly lacking in other marketable skills at that point.

Your affliction wasn’t nearly as tragic as people assumed it was, but you never feel like correcting them.

Kateryna has since taken a post at her alma mater, she informs you.

She teaches Transfiguration, and supervises the students of Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian origin. Since Durmstrang Institute serves such a diverse student body, their house ties are drawn more or less along lines of preferred language. You only knew a few students there, but nationality was a big deal for them.

“Professor Davydenko, then,” you joke.

Kateryna shakes her head and declares that such a title makes her feel old. But she’s not that old, you reflect. She’s maybe… six years older than you? She can’t be older than forty. At any rate, she doesn’t look a day over twenty.

You have no idea how any of Kateryna’s male charges manage to pass their exams. You’d take one look at her and flunk on the spot.

Your conversation drifts to a more disquieting topic, as it tends to do when you two speak to each other. It was rare that you two crossed paths over anything  _good_ happening.

“You English are always so shortsighted, refusing to so much as acknowledge danger until it’s standing on your front doorstep,” Kateryna maintains. “As such calamity happened before, so will it happen again.”

You sigh.

Durmstrang graduates, particularly the ones who came up in your generation, have always reminded you of Alastor Moody in the way that they conducted themselves. Constant vigilance. Groping at shadows, no matter how diaphanous. Stern and wary, they learned the Dark Arts solely so they could combat the Dark Arts, so that any potential successors to Grindelwald would find opposition tenfold, and find that opposition possessing just as many offensive capabilities.

Fighting fire with fire.

You quash the impulse to roll your eyes, but your tone makes your incredulity apparent. “There is no concrete evidence to support the rumors that the Dark Lord continues to live. No one has heard from him sin--”

“Samhain nineteen-eighty-one, yes. At least from your standpoint.” Kateryna supplies. “But Bulgarian and Albanian students have spoken of a forest in where nothing lives, where many creatures, magical and mundane alike refuse to venture, where even the air teems of Dark Magic. ”

“Are you sure this isn’t a case where the muggles got careless with their odd devices again?” you counter, gazing at her meaningfully. “It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.”

With full comprehension of your implication, her eyes narrow to birdlike slits, and she sits up straighter. Right. Yeah. Probably not the best reference to make, considering her background. Augustine, are you trying to kill yourself?

You nervously wonder if half-veela witches are capable of transforming into those harpy-like creatures that spit fire when they get angry enough, or if that’s just a full-blooded ability. And though you swear that you can see the imprints of feathers form on Kateryna’s face, she remains otherwise composed.

“My understanding of certain muggle sciences may be lacking, but last I read, radiation does not fell unicorns and suck them dry, Augustine.”

If that isn’t even more disconcerting than the thought of getting your eyes pecked out, you don’t know what is. Something malignant enough to run around murdering unicorns is decidedly not something you want within three hundred miles of your person. Or anyone else’s person.

And while Kateryna’s story - should it be true - points to some being of unspeakable horror, there’s no sure way to say that those occurrences are related to the Dark Lord. It could be some other evil entity, which still is not exactly comforting.

You take a sip from your firewhiskey. “So what makes you believe this pertains to Voldemort in particular? There are most likely other dark beings out there.”

Kateryna sighs. “Corona once said to me that you were a competent student in Magical Creatures. Surely you haven’t forgotten certain properties of unicorn blood?”

You think for a few minutes, since it’s been a long time since you had to remember any of this shit for exams.

Unicorn blood can be highly restorative, almost to the point of resurrecting the dead, you recall, even used alone. Its effects can ostensibly be amplified when it constitutes an ingredient in a few potions, though you wouldn’t know them. You wouldn’t go near them.

Given the certain laws of equivalent exchange in relation to the purity of unicorns, anyone who succeeds in lengthening their lifespan through such nefarious means would be doomed to some sort of unspeakably cursed existence. It’s more poison than treatment. Death would be infinitely preferable.

Even animals instinctively know not to feed from unicorns.

And for wizards? Only practitioners of the darkest of the Dark Arts, and even amongst them, only with absolutely lose would consider it, at least as far as you believe. You’d have to be in some supremely dire straits.

Then again, there was that remark Ophelia Lovegood had made back on the first of November in 1981.

_(On this evening she’d let herself consume her weight in mead, the two of you occupying adjacent bar stools at the Three Broomsticks. While the wizarding world celebrated around you, both of you were trying to drink away the losses you’d suffered for, and suffered before, this moment._

_And, of course, you were discussing the man of the hour, the one who wasn’t Harry Potter._

_“...yeah, but he’d become something different, yeah? Wasn’t fully human in the end, was he, Augustine?”_

_“I doubt it.”_

_And then softly, almost as if she could have scared him back into legitimate existence by voicing her thoughts. “So what if he isn’t fully dead?”_

_“Nothing survives the Killing Curse. Nothing beats death,” you responded flatly, and more than a little bitterly._

_She blinked at you. Given how wide and probing her eyes were, she pretty much blinked through you. “I read in a book once that there are ways to preserve a part of oneself, if one undertakes undesirable rituals. When one portion dies, the other continues to live, theoretically speaking…”_

_“Sounds like a cross between splinching and becoming a ghost,” you said to her._

_Honestly, it had sounded something like a concept you’d gleaned from a book in Knockturn Alley, probably from Calypso’s collection, but you didn’t know much more than that._

_“No, it’s different,” she insisted, practically swaying off her stool and onto the floor. “Canna remember for the life of me what it was, though.”_

_“Great.”_

_“Also, look around,” Ophelia said, gesturing to all the people in the bar, even gesturing beyond the building and out the window, where equally raucous festivities were taking place. The International Statute of Secrecy had not been blown into such fine smithereens in centuries.  “Have you seen Dumbledore celebrating yet?”_

_“No, but he’s also the headmaster,” you reminded her._

_She did not seem particularly put off by your refutation._

_“Maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s that he knows something else.” She drains the last of her glass, and rises from her seat to engage in genuinely amicable conversation with a nearby hag. “Have it your way, Augustine.”_

_Oh, mad Ophelia, you reflected._

_Good old dependably crazy Ophelia, recently married to the managing editor of The Quibbler. No wonder she was positively teeming with unlikely conspiracy theories. Two nutters had gotten hitched, and proceeded to bounce joyfully off each other’s insanity. Calypso once had a word for such phenomenon - folie à deux._

_It was so easy to hold this particular observation as an undeniable truth at that moment.)_

However, you gaze up at Kateryna again, and something has changed.

You feel unsure of yourself, of one of the fundamental convictions of the wizarding world, which had been set in stone and dipped in gold after autumn of 1981.

Yes, Ophelia had been two stops from Dagenham on a good evening, but she had also been singularly brilliant. And what were the odds of an infant actually having vanquishing one of the darkest wizards in history, when so many adult witches and wizards had failed?

_What do you believe, Augustine?_

Agnostic to the end, you don’t know. You pick at your bowl of stew.

“Okay, say you’re not delusional. Say he is trying to make a comeback. Then what?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “What will you do?”

Good question. What  _are_ you going to do if he returns to power? You’d like to think that you’ll avenge your friends, although with a compromised leg, and reflexes that have been dulled by age and peacetime, you doubt you’ll get very far. Probably get Stunned into muggle traffic by your old friend Horatio. That is, if you don’t outright decide to run for it. Somewhere between being outed as an Order member in spring of ‘81, the last of the vehement Death Eaters getting arrested at the end of that year, and all the attempts that were made on your life in the interim, you think you’ve earned that right.

As if she’s anticipated your thoughts, Kateryna asks her next question rather cruelly. “Will you  _flee_ , Greengrass?”

If she had gone to Hogwarts, she would have sorted into Gryffindor, without a doubt.

“Depends on whether he starts chasing me first,” you respond. “But he owes me a few rematches, either way.”

She seems satisfied with this, at least.

You get up, purchase an entire bottle of Ogden's Old firewhiskey from the man at the bar, and pull your cloak over your shoulders. You hold up the bottle for Kateryna to see.

“Let’s do this proper, shall we?”

You offer her your arm. She smiles, and in the process, shows off every single one of her perfectly white teeth. She leaves her veil off this time, and glows even more for it. By the time you two apparate back to the cemetery, it’s fully dark, your poppies are gone, and Kateryna’s tulips are phasing in and out of existence.

There’s also yet another figure present in front of Corona’s headstone, assumably to pay their respects. From behind, they appear to be a rather slight woman with white-blonde hair.

You’d recognize her gestures anywhere.

That’s Narcissa Malfoy standing there. She conjures two or three tulips, and gently puts them down beside the others.

“Happy birthday, my dear Corona. A pity you could not be with us for it,” she says, voice thicker than you’ve heard it in recent memory.

Kateryna mutters something contemptuous related to  _“those who chose to do nothing”_ , and disapparates with a crack. The other woman turns, eyes wide, to gawk at the source of the noise.

“Oh, it’s only you,” she comments.

You extend your hands in a non-threatening gesture, to show that you have not drawn your wand.

“Only me.”

She casts Lumos, just to be sure, illuminating both of your faces.

“Good evening, Greengrass.”

You uncork the firewhiskey and pour a good measure of it upon the sodden earth while she watches. Watches and says nothing, just wrings her hands, over, and over, and over.

It’s always strange to see the way grief and guilt affect people. Some are aged by it. Others are made younger.

Narcissa falls firmly into the second category. With her red-rimmed gaze, her eye makeup coursing down her face, lipstick on her teeth, and her chignon in complete disarray, she could be the same stricken fifth year who burst into tears after her boyfriend spurned their date in favor of attending one of the Dark Lord’s meetings.

You down half the remaining firewhiskey, and, after a second’s thought, offer the leftovers to her.

“Lucius does so loathe it when I drink,” she sniffs, but does not refuse the bottle. In fact, she drinks deeply, taking to it like a fish. “But I suppose this may be warranted. I am the last, you know.”

In school, she had been part of a quartet of Slytherin girls - her, Calypso Shacklebolt, Corona Yaxley, and Antoinette Nott - all of whom had adjacent beds in the girls’ dormitories and concluded their formal education in 1977.

Cal had met her own fate nine years ago, Corona had found a more permanent one not too long before, and Nott had joined the Death Eaters and required two aurors to finally kill her, shortly after the defeat of the Dark Lord.

You look Narcissa over. In every way that matters, she is, indeed, the last.

She drains the bottle, weaves over to the willow tree, and leans against it, weeping in earnest, with her high heels digging furrows into the mud. Oh, how you’ve always hated the melancholy drunks the most. Still, you wrap your arm around her shoulders, and she is too toasted to object.

“How do you deal with it, Augustine?” she wants to know, because you too, are the last, in your own way. You two were on opposite sides, but have become parallel and equivalent in this respect.

“One day at a time, I reckon.”

These are no words of reassurance, but they are the only ones you have. You’re not about to lie to her. Loathsome husband aside, you respect Narcissa Malfoy enough to give her to the truth.

In return, she provides you with her own brand of candor.

“Lucius is naturally raising my son in the old tradition,” she confesses. “Wants to send him to Durmstrang next year, far away from home, to be educated by  _Karkaroff_  of all people.”

She spits the name with particular vitriol. “So he’ll hex mudbloods during his winter holidays, I suppose.”

You’re not sure what to say, what response will magically cause her to stop weeping. You settle for something neutral.

“He’s doing what he thinks is right.”

In the high moonlight, Narcissa leans against you as if she might be drowning and you are a particularly enticing piece of driftwood.

“You never thought it was,” she points out. “You were a blood traitor.”

“I am not your husband.”

“Too right you’re not, championing such undeserved causes,” she replies, her voice cold. “I support Lucius, you know, but I do get afraid.”

You raise an eyebrow. This was the same woman who would have played Seeker to Slytherin house if such notions hadn’t been unladylike.

“Afraid? You?”

“It’s one thing to raise your child to trust in the obvious order of things. It’s another to raise him to fight to the death to uphold them,” she clarifies. “If such beliefs are no more than the natural course, why should we have to resort to violence over them? Shouldn’t they be self-evident?”

This may be the closest Narcissa has come to questioning her upbringing, and she isn’t finished. She crosses her arms over her chest, and an irate furrow forms between her eyes.

“I do not want my Draco to fight. I do not want him to duel. I do not want him to have to bribe his way out of an Azkaban sentence with half his inheritance and all his Ministry connections,” she insists. “There is so much more that I want for him than the sins of his father.”

You nod, finally thinking of something that might placate her, even if you’re questioning it just the same. 

“The Dark Lord is gone, remember? There’ll be no one to force your son to take such action.”

However, she seems to have retreated into her own mind for a bit, spurred by the alcohol in her system. She wraps her arms tightly around herself, and does not talk for a period of time. When she does, it is not with her usual voice; instead, she speaks with a sort of conviction that unnerves you.

This is not Lady Malfoy. This is not the woman whose wedding ceremony you watched and silently mocked - _how could someone look at their fiance with such cloying devotion?_ \- all those years ago.

This is someone entirely different. This the girl who Calypso befriended in first year, who wanted to give as good as she got. This is Narcissa Black, thoughtful and astute as ever, and you understand, finally, exactly why she and her roommates got along so well.

“One chess player may be gone, but all his pieces are still lying on the board, just waiting to be picked up again."

That they are. You remember her wedding day, the old positions of the black and white men, and how clear the difference had seemed between each faction back then. You were all being used, being moved into your most strategically useful places, but you either hadn't known or hadn't cared.


	6. tracing a sparrow on snow-crested ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for taking so long to write this chapter up.  
> I had an awful case of writer's block where this fic is concerned.  
> Originally it was going to cover the wedding, the reception, and the Slytherin order meeting at Calypso's flat.  
> Then it got far too long, and I decided to split it up into two parts.  
> I still don't exactly /like/ this chapter, but I think it'll suffice.

**_February 1978_ **

Getting ready for Narcissa Black’s wedding is up there with being forced to chug Gobstone exudate as far as you’re concerned. You can’t even get too hammered at the reception; after all, you have a duty to perform.

While attempting to fix your hair, you thank every saint that may be that this ceremony is taking place in February, ensuring that you probably won’t expire from heat stroke in these stuffy dress robes. Unless, of course, the ceremony is held indoors, which it most likely will be, given that it is _February._

You simply cannot win.

Your younger siblings, Jude and Dymphna, are slightly more eager about the whole thing, particularly Dymphna.

As a groomsman, Nick has already gone to meet up with Malfoy, leaving you and Luke with the remainder of the Greengrass clan, or “cat herding duty” as you privately think of it.

Luke is unflappable and apathetic as always, while Jude and Dymphna approach the entire affair with wonderment.

“A wedding!” she exclaims, nearly tripping over the hem of her dress robes in her enthusiasm. “Can you even _imagine?_ I wonder what Narcissa’s dress looks like. I bet it’ll be so pretty.”

Having witnessed more than a few of your housemates make respectable pureblood marriages over the last few years, you absolutely can imagine. You, Horatio Avery, Lawrence Mulciber, and Ignatius Selwyn, the unmarried Slytherin men from your year, can probably recite half the ceremony text in your sleep.

However, being that Dymphna only turned sixteen a month ago, and this is her first real introduction as a member of proper Wizarding society, you suppose you can excuse a certain amount of zeal on her part, even if it borders on the irritating.

She piles Sleekeazy potion onto her ruler straight hair as if she can make it curl out of sheer force of will.

And anyone could, it would be she, blasted Gryffindor that she is. Only one in the Greengrass line.

You’ve always been a little afraid for her, sticking out like that, but she’s never struck you as being unable to hold her own, or being as shameful as the rest of that lot. Maybe it’s a hereditary thing, such lack of decorum, although that wouldn’t explain the likes of Sirius Black.

Luke sighs, and straightens his tie. “They’re really quite boring, let me tell you.”

He would know even better. He’s three years your senior, meaning he’s been to a greater number of them.

“Well, seeing as I wasn’t old enough to get a pass and Portkey the last time any of your mates got married, I wouldn’t know.”

You shrug, and exchange a glance with Luke. “Last wedding I went to the only noteworthy thing that happened was Rowle drinking too much and passing out in Macnair’s duck pond.”

“Are you serious?”

You and Luke nod in tandem.

Dymphna claps her hands once. “Oh, I wish I could have seen it!”

“You wish you could have seen everything,” Luke replies evenly. “Now quiet down, and wait for word from Malcolm.”

All of you are waiting for the Avery brothers to march over to your manor. They can’t Apparate, since those two still splinch themselves regularly. Flying's out in dress robes.  That leaves walking.

The Portkey on the mantlepiece is set to transport you to whatever opulent hall the Malfoys have rented out for the occasion. No doubt it’ll be expensive enough to pay your Gringotts salary several years over.

If the Malfoys are known for anything - besides their pomposity - it’s for their ostentatious overcompensation. Yes, they’re a wholly pureblood family, but compared to the Blacks, the Shacklebolts, the Averys, the Lestranges, and hell, even your family, they amassed their wealth and influence fairly recently, within their last three or so generations. You’re not sure of the specifics, but as the story goes, the Malfoys started out well off way back when, forging important Ministry connections, until the eldest son, the heir to their line, managed to disgrace them in a major way - allegedly by carrying on an affair with a mudblood - along with spending most of the Malfoy fortune, destroying their reputations, and nearly plunging them into total economic ruin in one fell swoop.

The sole thing they retained, along with various heirlooms, was their manor.

Only by the time of Lucius’s grandfather’s generation did they manage to fully climb back into the good graces of proper Wizarding circles.

Now they seem more determined than ever to flaunt their status, particularly Lucius, who reminds you of a male peacock, strutting around and showing off. You look forward to the display he’s planned. No doubt it’ll be something you, Horatio, Ignatius, and, grudgingly, Calypso will mock for months to come.

Moreover, you know from listening to Calypso unload on you about Narcissa being at wit’s end, that the youngest Black daughter most definitely did not approve of Lucius’s flamboyant wedding plans.

If she’d had it her way, it would have been a simpler, but more dignified affair. None of this inviting every single pureblood, Slytherin, or influential Wizarding family in the country. No renting out a grandiose venue - and here, according to Cal, Narcissa had started crying - to make such a spectacle.

Not two days ago, you’d actually witnessed Narcissa and her hysterics personally.

* * *

On a day you’d decided to apparate to Calypso’s flat to make sure she’d eaten within the last twenty-four hours, it turned out that she already had a guest.

Though you stood just outside Cal’s front door, due to the fact that the wards had been set to admit you, you could hear most of the conversation the pair were having. The silencing charms did not apply to you.

“--has a lovely manor in Wiltshire, I don’t know why we couldn’t just have it there,” Narcissa said. “Just a few close friends, nothing too showy.”

And then, Calypso speaking. “I understand. Have you tried informing him of your feelings on the matter?”

“I did, but he was adamant. And besides, it’s already far too late. The invitations have been sent out. All the preparations have been made. It’s only a few more days, now.”

Cal muttered a remark about how fast the preparations could be unmade if Bellatrix - Bella to Calypso, her sister-in-law to be - paid Lucius a little social call.

“I could even go with her, Cissa. Convince him to try and see things from your point of view.”

It was truly a testament to Calypso’s disposition that you were unsure as to whether or not she was serious. Sort of like the day she tried to curse the Headmaster, except then you _knew_   she was serious.

Calypso and Bellatrix visiting Malfoy, well, you could be sure of how that one would turn out. Idly, you wondered if the Cruciatus Curse’s effects would amplify if it were thrown simultaneously by two casters.

Narcissa gave a wet little half-giggle at that. Evidently something in Calypso’s features suggested that she was merely joking around. “I am not letting you two torture my fiancé, ridiculous as he may be sometimes.”

“A pity.”

Narcissa complimented Calypso on her taste in tea.

Then, they shared another laugh about the idiosyncrasies of the nouveau riche, and their lack of good taste.

“I probably shouldn’t find this so funny,” Narcissa admits. “It’s mean. It’s terrible.”

“Nevertheless.”

They went quiet for a while.

Then, Calypso began to speak in one of her _“I-am-not-trying-to-lecture-you-but-I-will-anyway”_   tones.

“I’m not saying this in an attempt to change your feelings for him,” she started out delicately, “but if he doesn’t respect your opinions now, what makes you think he won’t do the same in the future?”

“Callie,” Narcissa murmured, in warning.

Only she was allowed to use that nickname (not that you would have, too girly for your liking).

But Calypso had been undeterred in airing her grievances, much to your nonexistent surprise.

“Marriage is built upon mutual respect. Not blind acquiescence.”

You heard the clink of china, either someone moving abruptly, or maybe putting down their teacup too fast. The sound of fabric rustling. Someone getting up?

Calypso speaking again. “Narcissa, do calm down.”

“No,” Narcissa said.

And then, she began to shout. “I am tired of calming down. I _don’t want_ to calm down!”

_Oh, wonderful._

“You think I acquiesce blindly to him? You think that little of me?” Narcissa demanded, her agitation, her stress, her frustration, and her anger coming through loud and clear. “Emptyheaded Cissy, naive doormat, youngest of Druella’s daughters, suited for marriage, bearing children, and not much else.”

You weighed the pros and cons of interfering, but decided - as per usual - that you did not feel like getting hexed by anyone today. And one of them would have most certainly hexed you on sight.

“I never said that I thought t--” Calypso tried point out, but Narcissa interrupted her again, not with poised, tranquil displeasure, but with continued fury.

“Bella says the _same_ things to me, you know,” she fumed. “And I swear I’ll lose my mind _if I hear them anymore!”_

“Oh.”

Narcissa slowed down, and lowered her voice. “I know I’m soft compared to you two, that I don’t duel, that I probably cannot duel, that I am probably the weakest of my sisters.”

“I don’t believe you’re the weakes--”

“I am,” Narcissa insisted. “Bella’s more intelligent and confrontational than her husband, and Andy, well…” She trails off momentarily. “...disappointing as her choice to run off with that mudblood was, she actually did it and never looked back. And what am I doing? Nothing. Nothing at all, but going along. _You’re_ right. _Bella’s_ right.”

Narcissa started to cry, her sobbing punctuated by the occasional hiccup. You imagined Calypso moving over to rub soothing circles into her back.

“I never meant to imply that you were weak, and I am sincerely sorry if I did,” Calypso replied in that conciliatory tone she’s learned from Healer training. “Restraint, which you possess in abundance, is merely a different type of strength.”

“What a load of b--”

“I’m serious, Cissa,” Calypso maintained. “When I tried to singlehandedly duel half of Gryffindor house over their insistence on terrorizing Severus Snape, who held me back?”

“I did, but, but… Only so you wouldn’t end up in the hospital wing! Or expelled!”

“Exactly what I mean, then. Besides, you know better than most how my mouth gets ahead of my mind sometimes.”

“And your wand even further,” Narcissa quipped, the beginnings of a smile in her voice.

Calypso laughed at her. “I cannot argue there.”

“You and Bella both,” Narcissa mused, calmly. “Letting your wands speak for you. I worry about that sometimes.”

“Bellatrix Lestrange is a singularly talented witch. I could learn a great deal from her. I do hope to learn a great deal from her.”

You gave a sharp exhale, as if someone had hit you with an Impediment Jinx straight to the gut.

What was Calypso playing at? This was not part of the plan.

Even Narcissa gasped.

“Does that mean you intend to go the full way?” she asked, panic creeping into her tone. “Don’t you have training to finish?”

“Obviously,” came Calypso’s response, just this side of sarcastic. “However, once I’ve completed that, if I am not mistaken, I presume I could be of some use. Do the Death Eaters have any Healers in their ranks as of yet?”

“You’d have to ask Bella about that sort of thing, but I don’t think they’ve successfully recruited one to my knowledge,” Narcissa admitted. “It goes against their training or something. _First do no harm_ , and all that.”

“Harm is subjective,” Calypso reasoned, her voice cold as January wind. “It could be argued that allowing things to continue the way they are, with the muggles and the mudbloods operating unchecked, constitutes a far greater degree of harm.”

You knew Calypso was a master of deceit. She had to be.

First, to her uncle, when she planned to join the Death Eaters, and then to most of Slytherin house, when she decided to ally with the Order.

Despite that, this was beyond anything you could have imagined.

For like the sixth time this year, you were afraid for her.

“How many years until you finish your studies? One? Two?” Narcissa asked.

“Two and a half, Cissa. Accelerated as this program is, my fellow students and I have a great deal of material to master in a greatly compressed period of time.”

“Oh, well, that’s still not that long in the scheme of things.”

More quiet. Papers rustling. Tolsey asking Mistress Callie and Mistress Cissa if they would care for any more refreshments.

Calypso corrected the elf soundly.

“Narcissa, you mean. You are no familiar to her, nor to me. You are to address us by our full first names, and nothing else.”

You were not sure what happened next, but something hit the wall with a bang. Narcissa gasped, and Calypso spoke in her most contemptuous tone thus far.

“I absolutely _forbid_ you from punishing and disgracing yourself in front of my guests, Tolsey! If you feel the inclination to do so, you will do it in private. Is that _understood?”_

“Yes, Mistress!” Tolsey exclaimed, a quaver in her voice.

You’d seen her admonish Tolsey in such a way, the one time you, she, Rabastan, and Horatio ate dinner at her flat.

Calypso’s tone grew tender, then. “I apologize for the disturbance, Cissa. Did you want anything more?"

“I suppose a few more of the little sandwiches. They really are exquisite.” Narcissa murmured.

“Be so kind as to get Cissa what she wants,” Calypso insisted. “Another pot of tea, while you’re at it. And don’t mix them up, again. We both prefer the silver needle tea.”

“Yes, Mistress!”

You heard Tolsey scampering off to follow her orders.

Calypso groaned. “House elves, I tell you.”

“Lucius has one, and he’s even worse. At least yours gets the message eventually,” Narcissa replied.

“Mine gets the message because I depend on her so frequently. The work I do at all hours of the day and night. One minute I’m in the Spell Damage ward, and the next, I’m back in my sitting room, three hours ago,” Calypso explained. “If Tolsey hadn’t been capable of adapting to that, I would have dismissed her straightaway. But as it turned out, Rabastan chose well, as he tends to.

“Still a rather strange gift,” Narcissa said.

“Strange, but practical. I much prefer this to a necklace or some other trinket,” Calypso responded, sighing loudly. “Though sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision to accept my admission into the accelerated track. I could have embarked on my studies the slow way, the regular way.”

How long would it have taken for you to finish that?”

Calypso gave a mirthless little laugh. “Nine to twelve years. By the time my fellow students and I finish, we’ll actually be somewhere around thirty. Assuming we don’t drop out, of course. The dropout rate is understandably high.”

“But you won’t drop out,” said Narcissa, with absolute certainty. “I _know_ you won’t, Healer Shacklebolt.”

You knew Calypso must have been smiling then, one of her rare and genuine smiles.

Tolsey came back with their refreshments, and Calypso did not thank her.

_(You wondered what it did to her to act that way toward Tolsey each time someone like Rabastan, Narcissa, Horatio, or Ignatius came over._

_The first time you’d come by her flat after she’d been given the elf, and every time since then, she addressed the Tolsey with far more respect than such a creature deserved._

**_“Would you please…?”_ **

**_“You look tired, Tolsey. Do lie down. I can manage this myself.”_**  
  
**_“Thank you for your assistance. You’ve been quite helpful today. Here, have some quiche.”_**

_You’d thought that maybe she’d grown up without a house-elf, even if she was a Shacklebolt. Maybe she didn’t know how that sort of thing worked._

_“In case you don’t know, you don’t have to really waste all that courtesy on her,” you’d informed her. “They’re bred to be docile, to take orders without objection, to derive pleasure from doing their master’s bidding.”_

_Calypso’s mouth had set into one thing, disapproving line. Her eyes had narrowed. Her nostrils had begun to flare. You had waited for her to pull her wand on you, although you hadn’t understood why she would have._

_She hadn’t done that. Instead she had begun to speak._

_**“In case you don’t know,”** she began, in a vitriolic mockery of your previous words._

_“In case you really don’t know, Augustine, people said the same exact thing about blacks, when the British colonized Nigeria. They insisted we were inferior, that we were hardwired to serve, that our minds gravitated naturally toward it, that freedom would have been cruel because we wouldn’t have been able to comprehend it. **Yes, Augustine, in case you don’t know,”** she spat._

_You’d meant to open your mouth in protest and refutation, but Calypso hadn’t been done speaking._

_“Uncle Kingsley had a house elf for a while, still has him in fact. And he addresses Darcy with the same courtesy as he would anyone else.”_

_“Tolsey isn’t a person, though. It’s completely different,” you’d countered. “She’s an elf. She really is made to serve.”_

_**“All sapient creatures warrant an inherent amount of respect, Greengrass,”** Calypso stressed. “Every single one.”_

_You’d rolled your eyes._

_“As always, you are making a huge deal out of nothing. I know you haven’t been sleeping properly, but are you really this daft?”_

_She’d subsequently thrown you out of her flat with the most forceful Impediment Jinx you’d seen in several years, breaking part of her front door in the process. Classic Calypso.)_

Then, after listening to Narcissa ask question after question about Calypso, Rabastan, and when they intended to marry - “Oh, we could definitely have it at the manor if you were so inclined!” you elected to finally make your presence known.

Merlin knew you couldn’t handle anymore of that tripe.

You rapped the door with your knuckles a few times.

Narcissa gave a little _“ah!”_ of surprise, and Calypso said nothing at first.

Then, she sighed.

“That’ll be Augustine, probably. It’s usually Augustine. Him or Corona.”

Narcissa cleared her throat. “Then, I should probably take my leave.”

“You don’t have to g--”

“I don’t want to be around anyone in this state,” Narcissa said quickly. “I know my makeup hasn’t held up. Give them my regards, though, will you?”

“Cissa, wai--”

You heard the sound of someone using the floo.

A minute or two later, Calypso did let you in, her face set in a frown.

She vanished the teacups and sat back down in one of her high-backed padded chairs, her dark eyes meditative. Meditative, and more than a bit distressed. You decided to try to cheer her up.

 _“And what exactly are your plans regarding Rabastan, dear Callie?”_ you asked in your highest falsetto.

Calypso stomped on your foot, doing little damage in her house slippers. Looked as if she was considering hexing you. Then rolled her eyes again.

“How long had you been listening, then?” she wanted to know.

You could have lied to her, but this was Calypso you were talking about. Even if you _did_ want to lie to her, you’d have sucked at pulling it off.

So you put down the lunch you’d gotten her from The Leaky Cauldron, and drummed your fingers against the table.

“I don’t know, I got here somewhere around Narcissa complaining about Malfoy’s… rather gaudy tastes.”

Calypso gave you a sidelong glance.

“And you couldn’t have made your presence known before I had to berate Tolsey?” she asked.

She wrapped her little housecoat more tightly around herself.

“I was scared of you or Narcissa trying to hex me for eavesdropping.”

“Fair enough.”

She summoned Tolsey, and apologized to her for what must have been five minutes straight.

In the end, Tolsey just stared silently at Calypso with her gigantic eyes.

“Will Mistress Calypso like another pot of the silver needle tea?”

“That should do just fine,” she said gently. “Augustine?”

You shrugged. “Don’t care.”

Calypso smiled fleetingly at that.

Once the tea was served, Calypso seemed to relax. She re-cast the wards on her flat, and when you looked at her askance, she had a prompt answer for you.

“I set the wards to temporarily admit Cissa. However, I do not think it would be prudent to leave them that way."

“Good idea.”

Calypso took a sip from her teacup. Since this would usually be the time where she’d launch into some kind of rant, you decided to prod her a little.

“Sickle for your thoughts?”

She shook her head, and gestured in the direction of the floo, carding a hand through her thick hair.

“This wedding is going to be quite interesting at best,” she deadpanned. “And an utter fiasco at worst.”

“Well, it’s not like we can do all that much about it. Remember how we’ve got more important things to consider.”

Calypso summoned Tolsey once again, and then cast on her spell to induce somnolence.

Well, then. Things were about to heat up. Calypso graced you with a wry smirk.

“I shall continue to play my part perfectly, don’t you worry. Better than usual, even.”

You recalled her earlier conversation with Narcissa, the one concerning Bellatrix, and brought it up with her. Obviously, it was part of a plan, a plan that had not been approved by Dumbledore - not that you gave a rat’s ass about that - but you wanted details.

So you asked for them.

Calypso folded her hands in her lap, and gazed at you calmly.

“True or false? Bellatrix has a certain amount of respect for me, at least as much respect as she can have for someone who isn’t Voldemort or one of his followers,”

You thought it over.

“True.”

“True or false? Most of the Black family is infamous for drinking a great deal of alcohol during social gatherings.”

Except for Andromeda, who got disinherited, and Narcissa, who will still down the better part of a bottle of wine during times of stress, you can’t think of a single Black unacquainted with the art of getting shitfaced. Including Regulus.

“True.”

“True or false? I will be seated at Narcissa’s table during the reception, as part of the wedding party, most likely near Bellatrix, because we _do_ get along fairly well.”

“Likely true,” you responded. “But not definitely.”

“No, not definitely," Calypso conceded. "However, by implying to Narcissa that my pro-Death Eater leanings are more than just leanings, and giving her permission to relay this back to Bellatrix, isn’t it possible that she won’t let something slip to me after she has had a few drinks?”

“It’s possible, even probable,” you agreed. “It’s also dangerous.”

“That it is, but so is everything else we have done thus far. We are attending this wedding to gather information, which is what I intend to do.”

Still, as barking mad as she was, Bellatrix was highly intelligent. If she caught even the slightest hint of undue prying on Calypso’s part - and there _was_ a nonzero possibility of that - there would be heavy consequences. Deadly consequences. Moreover, Calypso would be the first to face them.

You tried to imagine a world without your best friend. A flash of green, a body with no pulse, and then a corpse, six feet under. Unlike Leo, whom you could see dying, whom you had seen dying in dreams, you drew blanks for Calypso's demise. She was a constant in your universe, had been for more than ten years.

You could not imagine an existence without her. You put your hand on top of hers.

“I don’t want you to put yourself in unnecessary jeopardy, Cal.”

“Then I won’t,” she returned, smoothly. “I’ll only put myself in the jeopardy I believe to be necessary.”

The sudden urge to pound your fist against the table, to smash your teacup against the wall seized you, but you held it in check.

“At least tell Julius about this. Someone else should know. Someone else should weigh in on it.”

Calypso agreed to that much. You were there when she told him.

In typical Julius form, he neither discouraged nor encouraged the plan.

You went away from Calypso's flat full to the brim with dread, a million hypotheticals crossing your mind.

But a few of her words stuck with you. Just a few, like little seeds.

Enough to get you setting up a tentative plot of your own.

_“True or false? Most of the Black family are infamous for drinking a great deal of alcohol during social gatherings.”_

Regulus included. That kid could put away an amount of liquor somewhat worrying for someone of his size.

You wouldn't have the advantage of being seated with the wedding party, but you would have the advantage of Reggie being not nearly as shrewd as his cousin. You would have the advantage of Reggie trusting you, his former Quidditch captain, a former prefect of his house. You would have the advantage of his youth. He wasn't as naive as Leo, but he wasn't too far off. He had been raised by loving parents who doted on him. He was popular with the other people in Slytherin. He had no reason to be cautious or wary around you.

And if you added up those advantages? Well, you could learn quite a bit. Not as much as Calypso could, but definitely something.  

You ran back to Calypso's flat to apprise her of this idea.

After hearing it in its entirety, she walked into her kitchen, grabbed four bottles of mead, and handed you one.

"Well, let's prepare ourselves for some necessary danger then," she laughed, after she'd gotten reasonably shitfaced.

Once you put her to bed, you dropped by Corona's.

She did not particularly question what you were doing there so late in the evening.

Instead, she beckoned you into her room, still wearing her silk dressing gown, and shut the door.

The look on your face must have been glorious, because she scoffed at you, put a hand on your chest, and pushed you away.

"Don't get any ideas, Augustine," she murmured. "It's easier to cast wards on one room than it is on an entire dwelling."

And she did cast wards, several of them in a language you didn't know. She turned to you again.

"So what's going on? Who died?"

"No one, yet."

"That's nice to know."

You sat down next to her on the bed.

Without prompting, she picked up a decanter off her nightstand, and poured the both of you glasses of red currant rum.

You told her about your plan, and Calypso's, stressing her role in yours in each. 

"You're telling me that you want me to get Regulus drunk," she confirmed.

"Not incoherent, mind. Mildly plastered. Enough for me to get some information out of him."

Corona's eyes glinted in the low light of her room. 

"And while I'm doing this, you also want me to make sure that Bellatrix is imbibing an appropriate amount of alcohol." She shook her hair from her eyes, expression unreadable. "Because Calypso's plan hinges on it, and she stands to lose a lot more than you do if it fails."

You nodded.

For a moment, she spoke not a word. You thought she would refuse. She had a right to refuse. You might have refused.

Then, she let out a soft little laugh. 

"My dear Augustine, you have most certainly come to the right place. Getting people properly intoxicated is one of my many talents."

"I know."

The grin remained on her face.

"Stay, won't you?"

You did.

 

* * *

 Fast forward to thirty or so hours later.

You and your siblings are still waiting for the Avery brothers to get to your place.

You wonder if they managed to get lost somehow, and decide against that theory.

Perhaps they chose to ditch the whole thing altogether. You wouldn’t blame them.

If it weren’t a prime moment to gather intel, and had you not been instructed to do exactly that, you would have probably faked a cold and stayed in bed, talking shit about Nick to Cooby.

While you are not nearly as friendly with Narcissa Black as Calypso is, you don’t want to be stuck watching her misery in stuffy dress robes. 

She was a nice enough girl back in Hogwarts. You never had quarrel with her.

The Black line, somewhat inbred as it may be, is ranked several degrees above the Malfoy one for obvious reasons. Although she’s making a decent marriage, and Lucius is richer than she, Narcissa is technically marrying down, a fact she must surely understand.

She may have gotten on your nerves every now and then, with her formality, her simper, and her inability to get straight to the point, but she is no idiot. There’s a reason she and Calypso are good friends, and Calypso does not suffer fools.

So personally, you have no idea why she’s marrying Lucius, unless it _really_   _is_ for love, the way Calypso and Corona insisted. They were her roommates, they’d know best, you suppose.

Continuing to stand around, not doing much of anything, you also don’t understand why either the bride or the groom couldn’t have just told you where the wedding was set to be held straight off.

You could have dispensed with listening to Dymphna’s chatter and gotten there on your own time.

“You ready, Jude?” you ask your youngest sibling, who nods. You have no idea how he got a pass to attend this wedding, considering that he’s only fourteen. Whatever. Not your problem.

You can tell he’s excited. His hands are positively shaking with it. If he ends up letting go of the Portkey preemptively and falling into the English Channel, you’ll laugh yourself halfway to death. You and Luke will rescue him of course, after you’re done laughing.

And when Malcolm and Horatio finally arrive, having taken their sweet time, the latter is splattered in mud that Luke is quick to Scourigify from his dress robes.

“Do I even want to know…?” Luke begins.

Malcolm hooks a thumb in his younger brother’s direction and cackles.

“Got attacked by gnomes, that one.”

Horatio lets loose a few choice swear words, much to Dymphna’s amusement.

“Really?” she asks.

He nods.

“Protected this sod from the worst of it, not that you’ll hear him thank me any time this century.”

You grin at him, and shake his hand heartily. One of your best mates, here to mock the Malfoys alongside you.

“Let’s all be grateful that Horatio was valiant enough to take the hit, then.”

“Valiant, nothing,” Malcolm insists. “He walked straight through one of their holes, and then, all of a sudden, they started hurling dirt at us. Then, they attacked.”

“Yeah, and I jumped in front of you and took the worst of it.” Then, seconds later, after he’s finished inspecting himself, “Thanks for cleaning me off, Luke. More’n this one could be bothered to do.”

“Which was only proper, considering you set the whole thing in motion.”  
  
Meanwhile, ever the proper hostess when she can be arsed to act the part, Dymphna summons Cooby to prepare something for your guests to eat, as you tick down the time until the Portkey activates.

Clearly something from Madam Selwyn’s lessons sank in. Either that or she’s trying to impress Horatio. She hasn’t yet taken her eyes off him. He stares back just as openly.

Not like she could be bothered to summon so much as a slice of bread on your account, you reflect.

 _“My lady,”_  Horatio says, taking her proffered right hand and kissing it. “A pleasure to be present here with you.”

Dymphna curtsies. “Oh, but the pleasure is mine entirely.”

Luke observes the exchange with faintly raised eyebrows. Jude, who stands behind Horatio, mimes the act of throwing up. You avert your eyes.

Whatever this is, you probably should have anticipated it.

Horatio may be three and a half years Dymphna’s senior, but you and the Averys’ live next to each other, give or take a clearing apparently now full of gnome holes.

You’ll be surprised if their parents and your parents aren’t actively encouraging these sorts of interactions, Dymphna’s house affiliations notwithstanding. There are not enough marriageable pureblooded women from reputable families, and nobody can exactly choose the house of their sorting.

Besides, it’s not as if her years in that high tower have caused her to start espousing blood traitor ideology, at least as far as you’re aware. You’d like to think you’d be able to tell, being what you are.  
  
Regardless of familial plans, or your friendship with Horatio, though, you will personally hex him into resembling little more than a giant slug if you catch him snogging your sister at any point today. Judging from Luke’s face, he’s thinking something similar.

When Horatio’s hand strays a little too close to her waist, Luke clears his throat loudly.

“I never knew there were gnomes living between our estates,” he says, as Dymphna shoots him a scathing glare. “Someone ought to see to that.”

“We notified pest control, but you know how lazy those halfbloods are,” Malcolm responds. “A waste of Ministry budget if you ask me, that entire department.”

Luke sighs. “Don’t get me started on the Ministry budget. Mother of Slytherin, it’s an utter horror show.”

Malcolm drinks from his teacup before speaking once more.

“Can you believe all the legislation going into effect?”

“You’d need to specify which legislation, I can seldom believe half the propositions being ratified by the Wizengamot.”

“Well, for one, they’re cracking down on people who treat mudbloods exactly the way they should be treated. Also, this nonsense about mercy toward werewolves. Who even drafts such insanity?”

Luke, although you know he privately has no quarrel with muggleborns, or anyone, really, slides into Malcolm’s conversation without missing a beat. They continue talking Ministry politics, while Horatio stands off to one side.

He could not give fewer shits about politics, sort of like you, before you got involved in… certain things. He calls you over to stand by him so he doesn’t die of boredom. You and he fall into an easy dialogue. This is what you like about Horatio. You can go without seeing him for a while, and each time you two have a moment or two to talk, it’s as if no time has passed.

You do have one thing to say to him that might turn this chat a little sour.

“Careful with Dymphna, yeah?” You lean back against the adjacent wall. “She’s barely sixteen, hasn’t even taken her O.W.L.s, mate.”

Horatio’s mouth drops open in shock.

“Bloody hell, I thought she was older,” she says. “She _looks_ older.”

Something in your expression must betray your displeasure at that statement, because Horatio puts a hand on your shoulder, and quickly brings you up to speed with what took place the last time your parents went over Avery Manor for dinner.

“I dunno how it happened, but one minute they were talking about how wise I was to choose an apprenticeship in an apothecary, and the next minute they were talking about my marriage prospects.”

You’ve been on the receiving end of such painful speculation, especially since the woman your parents thought you would marry ended up engaged to a Lestrange. So you are not sorry that you did not fly over to Avery Manor that night, after the order meeting.

“Your mum, bless her soul, pointed out that I was barely out of Hogwarts, so I have plenty of time to find a wife. But then, your father,” Horatio makes a face, and you grin. Neither of you are particularly fond of him. “Your father mentioned that he had a daughter who would soon come of age, that he’d like to see her engaged to a respectable young man. Dunno why the hell he chose me of all people. Or why he’s trying to marry off a fifth year.”

You can sort of understand - but not excuse - your father’s twisted logic, which has a great deal to do with the fact that Dymphna is the first Greengrass in centuries to have wound up in Gryffindor.

“Think he’s trying to get her squared away with a betrothal before she ends up with one of those Gryffindor blokes,” you tell Horatio. “You know how the lot of them’re blood traitors. Bad enough to be in a house with them, but to end married to one?”

You wrinkle your nose in disgust at the very idea.

And you truly are disgusted, but not over that.

You’re going to need to have a serious talk with your father sometime, probably with Nick and Luke in tow. Wands drawn, all three of you.

“Not  _all_ of them are blood traitors,” Horatio replies with a little grin he reserves for when he’s about to tell you something interesting. “We got two who took the Mark pretty recently, and a few more who aren’t too keen on getting chummy with mudbloods.”

So Julius had underestimated their number in his report to your group, and consequently, in his report to the rest of the Order.

“That so?” you ask, with what you hope is nonchalant half-interest.

Then, you feign sincere concern, lowering your voice to a murmur. “Are you sure about these people? Certain of their intentions? We all know Dumbledore’s stance on the Dark Lord. It wouldn’t surprise me if he decided to send in a few spies.”

Horatio stares at you like you can't be serious.

“You think we didn’t make them drink their weight in Veritaserum before we let ‘em do a damn thing? Turns out Fawley’s got some halfblood cousins, but who doesn’t? Not an issue. Bellatrix Lestrange even hit Bulstrode with Legilimency. Worst thing he confessed to doing was snogging a mudblood once.”

Not intel you really needed, or wanted to hear, but intel nonetheless.

Oh, Augustine, you are playing your part so well. Calypso and Corona would be proud of you.

“Trust me, I just about vomited when I found out," Horatio continues. "Bulstrode snogging anyone, Merlin’s pants, someone needs to obliviate me on that one.”

You push that odious mental image aside, and wonder if you should lean on Horatio for a few more names. But you hadn’t even planned to receive the windfall of information you have already. It’s best not to try your luck. You still have your plan regarding the reception. 

Nevertheless, you think of Leo, and another question you want answered. “D’you put everyone through the Veritaserum wringer, or just the ones from the high tower?”

Horatio shakes his head in the negative. “

“Nope. Too much work to make the potion in the first place. If someone seems suspect, we might hit ‘em with Legilimency, but that’s about it.”

Good. As long as Leo keeps playing his part, he’s safer than you anticipated. Because he’s already received the Mark, and the others either failed to find anything questionable in his mind, or dispensed with trying to read it altogether.

“I see,” you reply.

Horatio gazes at you carefully, and the look in his eyes unsettles you. 

”Why, are you thinking of joining up?”

Oh, that’s what he wants to know.

You give a noncommittal shrug.

“Maybe so, maybe no,” you lie. “You know Mum and Dad’s attitude toward the Death Eaters. Bloody Catholics.”

“Yeah, yeah, thou shalt not kill muggles or whatever.” Horatio says derisively. “Never mind that they’ve driven us into hiding. It’s only going to get worse unless we do something.”

You nod.

“I’m not arguing with you on that. But I need time to save up more gold of my own, get my own flat and a proper job established before I do something that will almost certainly get me disinherited.”

Horatio claps you on the back, nodding quickly.

“Sainted Augustine Greengrass, always making sure he’s got everything perfectly lined up before he acts,” he says, a broad grin on his face. “Not that I’m faulting you there. Salazar knows we need more people like you, not these “charge blindly into duels like a load of morons” folk that we’ve been seeing.”

The “sainted” part is a little joke between you and him. After he told you, maybe in fifth year, that he'd been named after some random wanker from a play, you told him that you’d been named for a saint just like all your siblings. A saint that had once said “Lord, grant me chastity and continence, but don’t grant it yet.”

Horatio agreed that the name suited you, you and your numerous flings. You never became as infamous or conspicuous as Corona, but more than a few members of your house were aware of your “extracurricular activities”, including Calypso, who had to put you in detention every once in a while for being out and about after hours, and not on anything approaching prefect duty. Y'know, as you exited Ravenclaw tower sans trousers, and hoped not to run into anyone. 

_(“You make us look like we’re abusing our power. I swear, Greengrass, you are going to be the death of me.”_

_“Assuming you don’t kill me first.”_

_“If I catch you again, you just may just force my hand.”)_

In retrospect, those days were… a lot easier. You don’t want to become one of those old greying tossers knocking back firewhiskey and tonics in The Three Broomsticks, all while insisting that Hogwarts were the best years of their life, but there was something comforting in knowing that detentions, or a few docked house points, or maybe a halfassedly stern talking-to from Slughorn, was the worst fate you could expect.

Now, you'll be lucky if you live long enough to develop grey hair.

You have no pretenses about the future.

Horatio’s continued talk pulls you into the present once more.

“...when it comes with a keen mind and a knack for strategy. Rabastan’s ace, but he can’t hold it all down every time. I think the Dark Lord will be pleased to have you. He respects you and Calypso, even if you haven’t gone the full way yet. Let us not forget that he rewards loyalty.”

“Loyalty?” you ask, trying to think of a time you two had ever expressed such a sentiment in regard to the Dark Lord.

“Merlin, Augustine, you must have taken too many bludgers to the head.” Horatio points to your temple. “Remember fifth year, with you and Cal quoting his speeches at each other in the common room? Power, and those too weak to seek it?”

That’s right. He's right.

(You repress the memories you don't want to accept. You push them away, forget that they happened, vanish them for as long as you can.)

You two had really been that fervent. You two were among some of the first in your house to discuss the Dark Lord openly and freely, instead of the muttered conversations that other supporters had in the common room. It wasn’t like you could even be given detention for it. Neither of you had personally harmed anyone.

Calypso supported him because she disliked Albus Dumbledore. She called him a hypocrite, said his reticience was the very reason certain wars went on for as long as they did. She wanted to learn magic beyond the scope of what Hogwarts arbitrarily allowed. Furthermore, there were certain types of muggles that she would have gleefully eliminated.

You supported the Dark Lord, because you figured this bloke had the right idea with liberating Wizardkind from the shadows. Once, twelve, you'd done magic in front of muggles and wound up getting a letter stating that another such infraction would get you expelled from Hogwarts. Why? The International Statute of Secrecy. But why should you and yours be relegated to the darkness when Magic is Might? It was only the natural order of things that you should be elevated above the muggles.

Corona supported him later, partially because of what her half-brother said to her, and partially because she had appreciated that the Dark Lord had personally told her he could find many uses for her, perhaps more uses than he’d found for Clarence. That last part must have made her month.

Seldom had anyone afforded her such respect.

And as for Leo Travers, well, he already depended on you and Calypso for protection from those who tried to hex him as easy prey. Add in his crush on Barty Crouch the second, who was also brazen in his pro-Dark Lord leanings, and he would have followed all of you off a cliff.

In terms of Julius, he never officially pledged allegiance to anyone besides the Ministry, but he did not advocate for muggleborns or halfbreeds the way some crusading officials did.

You found out from him later that he’d been in the Order since 1974, and his instructions from Dumbledore were to act as a Ministry worker sympathetic to the Dark Lord’s movement. Never to join the Death Eaters, but to suss out which officials supported the Dark Lord, and which ones did not.

Sometimes, you wish you and Calypso had been more silent with your previous beliefs.

Combine the two of you in the common room, and you had a team capable of being quite persuasive. When Calypso could be bothered to argue verbally instead of pulling out her wand, she gave off an authoritative aura that made you, and many others, want to hear her out.

You think it’s a Shacklebolt thing, since her uncle has the same authoritative, dignified air about himself, but he’s far more practiced at it.

Meanwhile, ever the tactician, you posed logical arguments for supporting the Dark Lord. Calypso would occasionally play devil’s advocate for shits and giggles, but those exercises would make your assertions that much stronger.

Most damningly of all, _you two were prefects_. Your words held heavier weight to your housemates based on that alone.

You were tasked with setting _an example for proper and acceptable behavior._

You certainly set an example, all right.

You wonder how many of the younger Death Eaters took the Dark Mark because of something either you or Calypso said then, back when you personally threw the word _"mudblood"_ around like confetti. Calypso usually found a way to avoid saying it. 

There’s no way to definitively know how many impressionable Slytherins you pushed down that path of no return. Just your suspicions. Suspicions, guilt, and regret.

You wonder if similar feelings aren’t the real reason Calypso ultimately decided to enter Healer training.

“First, do no harm” is quite a distance away from comparing dueling techniques with Bellatrix Lestrange. It’s a span as wide as a canyon, but she made the leap anyway.

You chew on the inside of your mouth, a nervous habit.

Maybe you should have gone to confession last week, told the priest all the things you’ve done. But maybe risking your neck like this, for the Order of the Phoenix, will be your penance. Once either the Dark Lord expires or you do while trying to stop him, you might have earned absolution.

Assuming God exists, and all that other crap. You haven't figured it out yet.

“I’ll definitely think about it,” you tell Horatio, confidently as you can.

Luke calls five minutes until the Portkey activates, and yells at all of you to get over to where he is.

Horatio grins, slings an arm around your shoulders, and says he expected nothing less from you.

His expression falters, though, and in that moment you are terrified that he’s caught onto something.

“You alright?” you ask him.

“Yeah, yeah, ‘m fine ” he insists, waving off your concern. “It’s just that, uh, when you do finally join us, I’d appreciate it if you left out the fact that I told you any of this stuff. Strictly speaking, I’m not supposed to be giving information to anyone who hasn’t received the Mark yet.”

You turn, so you can stare him straight in the eye.

Here is a young man you’ve grown up with, who now has the Dark Mark somewhere on his forearm. Though the untruth you’re about to feed him feels like bile rising in your throat, you bulldog your nausea down. In for a Knut, in for a Galleon.

You have chosen your side.

“You know I’d never rat you out, or do anything to jeopardize your safety. Not for all the gold in Gringotts,” you insist.

He nods, the tension in his frame beginning to lift.

_(How long until you must duel him?)_

“I knew it, mate. Just wanted to make sure,” he says. He relates the next part so quickly that he’s practically babbling. “Some of them, don't tell 'em I said it, they’d sell each other out without a second thought just to advance in the Dark Lord’s ranks.”

“And I am not them,” you remind him.

"No, you're not." 

At that point, a thoroughly annoyed Dymphna marches over to you, and starts yanking you back toward Luke, Malcolm, and Jude, who are now outside. She tugs you down sharoply so she can whisper something into your ear.

“You can have quality boyfriend time later,” she mutters, shooting you a glare that could give the surliest Goblin a run for their money. “I’ve not a single idea why I even bother to…”

However, you don’t catch the rest of her sentence, because Luke shouts, “One minute and fifteen!”

Each of you places a hand on the Portkey.

Jude starts the countdown from thirty with that solemn voice of his.

You think of the last time you took a Portkey, from snowy Hogsmeade to Auror Moody’s house.

The Order meeting. Leo. Julius. Calypso. Corona. The Prewetts. Flying. Prayer.

_Thy will be done._

Then, you feel that telltale jolt in your stomach, and you’re spinning, spinning, spinning so fast you’re going to be sick.

If you vomit on your dress robes, you’ll actually punch Lucius for refusing to tell you the exact location of the proceedings, so you could have flown, apparated, or done literally anything besides take a bloody Portkey.

After you land, and make yourself look presentable again, a house elf dressed more extravagantly than you’ve ever seen one dressed, bows to your group. He asks you each your names, marks them down on a terribly long sheet of parchment, and directs you toward what looks like a small banquet hall from the outside.

 _Well,_ you think to yourself, _this isn’t as ridiculous as you anticipated._

Horatio quirks an eyebrow, possibly having concluded something similar.

Then you, and those with whom you’ve traveled, walk inside.

You blink, giving your eyes time to adjust. To confirm that you're seeing what you're seeing.

_What in the name of Salazar and all his heirs…?_

Jude mouths the words _“holy shit”_ at Dymphna, who appears to be similarly mesmerized.

Apparently, you were off by several degrees of magnitude as to how outrageous this would be.

You have not been off by this much since a seventh year Arithmancy exam where you integrated instead of derived, and informed the professor - with dawning horror - that two of your classmates should have died several weeks ago.

The ceilings and walls of this space are covered in impeccably painted frescoes, mostly of wizards and witches silently exchanging vows, and the occasional cherub. Every so often, one of the figures will move slowly, perhaps to kiss their spouse, or to touch their face lovingly. One pair bears a striking resemblance to Lucius and Narcissa, although this version of the latter seems a great deal more fawning and devoted than you’ve ever seen her.

And you’ve seen her give Lucius all sorts of sappy looks.

The edges of each archway and doorway look as if they’ve been dipped in silver and then burnished to a high shine. Gold colored plants twist and twine their way around the supporting columns.

And in the center of this room… entrance hall… thing, a chandelier hangs from the ceiling and gleams far too brightly.

If you stare at it too long, your head starts to pound like a drum.

There are other people milling about, and yet the marble floors bear not a single scuff. That’s an easy enough charm to manage, probably one of the most practical ones here.

At last, you catch Horatio’s eye. He’s standing with Ignatius Selwyn, trying to stop sniggering at everything.

You make to join them, until someone - or something, rather - interrupts you.

“Would Master Greengrass care for any refreshments?” another well-dressed house-elf, but not the one whom you saw outside, asks. How the hell does she know your name? House-elf telpathy? “The ceremony will not begin for an hour and a half yet, sir.”

“Um.” You scratch at the back of your head, rather lost for words. “Yeah, sure.”

“Would Master like me to bring refreshments to him, or would he prefer to get his own?”

You answer yes to the second suggestion, and the elf points to tables where small sandwiches, macarons, petit fours, little flutes full of various beverages, and other crap you can’t be arsed to identify have been set out.

Before you set out to ascertain whether any of those flutes contain alcohol, so you can attempt to be moderately wasted before you have to endure the remainder of this ordeal, you stride over to Horatio and Ignatius, the latter of whom has gone positively red-faced with laughter.

“Slytherin and all his heirs, and I mean _all_ his heirs, even the _illegitimate_ ones, I cannot believe…” Ignatius cackles, before he trails off. “I know the Malfoys have their own special way of operating that we mortals cannot comprehend, but...” He gestures at the frescoes, at all the silver and gold. “This is sheer glory.”

“Someone better have a camera,” Horatio says. “Everything here needs to be preserved for eternity. It’s like Madam Puddifoot’s vomited all over the walls and ceiling.”

“If I were Narcissa, I would have strangled him,” he goes on.

“The ceremony hasn’t started yet,” Ignatius observes. “She still _could_ , theoretically.”

Horatio jabs you in the arm with his finger.

“Hey, Saint Augustine, what're are you gawping at now?”

You point at the long, white table, to the flutes upon it. “Think any of ‘em have champagne?”

Horatio pauses, unsure.

“I think it would be a safe assumption to make,” Ignatius pipes up, inclining his head toward Professor Slughorn, whom you had not noticed until then. 

His cheeks have gone all ruddy, and sure enough, he’s got one of those little flutes in his hand.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to be able to get wasted until after the ceremony,” Horatio says, mildly perplexed. “Someone find Thorfinn and tell him there’s alcohol around. Let’s see how much of a prat he can make of himself.”

Ignatius shakes his head. “Can’t be any worse than Malfoy, really. Even if he decided to do drunken backflips in front of the procession.”

“How good is your Imperius Curse?” Horatio asks Ignatius. “Rowle could explore his heretofore unknown talents in gymnastics.”

You break out into a fit of uncontrollable laughter at the very thought.

You haven’t even had anything to drink yet, save the orange juice you had with your breakfast.

 _Yes, Ignatius Selwyn and Horatio Avery are Death Eaters,_ you remind yourself, _but they’re also your old mates._ They’ll probably keep you sane today, since Calypso won’t be around. You wonder what she, Corona, and the other bridesmaids have made of all this. Odds are, they’re convincing Narcissa to stop crying, or fixing their hair.

As for Horatio, instead of doing the dignified thing, walking to the refreshments, picking them up, and bringing them back, he gets a (mostly) clear line of sight in relation to the table. Then he pulls out his wand, and summons three of the little flutes, nearly hitting several people in the process.

You take a second to bury your face in your hands and pretend that you have no idea who he is.

Unfortunately, he hands a flute to you and Ignatius each, as overdramatically as possible.

 _“A toast to Lucius Malfoy!”_ he cries, stifling his laughter. You three clink your glasses together.  
  
“Another toast to Narcissa Black, for not murdering her husband-to-be,” Ignatius says, more quietly.

You clink your glasses again.

You’re not sure what the other adults present are making of your terrible trio. Probably shaking their heads and remarking on the audacity of youth.

“Remind me to never marry a Malfoy,” Ignatius says seriously, once he’s consumed two thirds of his drink.

Horatio’s always been the best at Charms, so he wordlessly refills the glasses when they need refilling, which is frequently, considering their size.

“I think Narcissa snagged the only one,” you reply.  
  
Horatio tips his head back and drains the entirety of his glass.

“What a tragedy for the rest of us,” he says, wiping the back of his mouth with his hand.

Speaking of dripping sarcasm, minutes later, Ignatius spies a familiar face in the crowd.

Either because he’s determined to act as moronic as possible today (you wouldn’t exactly fault him for it), or because Horatio filled his glass one time too many, he shouts after the poor kid.

“Oi, Snape!” He yells. “Severus Snape!”

Clad in secondhand dress robes you wished you’d known he would be wearing, so you could have gotten him something less threadbare, Snape walks stiffly toward your little group.

He greets you, Horatio, and Ignatius by name, in that exact order.

“Ah, Selwyn. How _wonderful_ to see you,” he continues.

You stifle a laugh in the sleeve of your robes, and Snape glances up at you, curiously.

Horatio, whom Snape has always respected, hands him a champagne flute, having evidently cast a Doubling Charm on his own. Severus takes small sips from it, consuming it the way you’re likely supposed to consume it. Slowly.

“So what do you think of all this, Severus?” Horatio wants to know.

Come to think of it, you want to know the answer as well.

“I think it’s interesting, from a certain aesthetic viewpoint,” he drawls. Horatio and Ignatius exchange glances. “Personally, I find it to be a bit excessive, but I am the one not getting married, after all.”

“A bit excessive,” Ignatius repeats.

Horatio snorts into his drink and almost chokes, while you snigger at both Horatio’s fuckup and Snape’s statement.

Severus eyes three of you warily as you lean on each other and try to stop laughing.

You haven’t the foggiest idea why he’s so bent out of shape, until you recall that it wasn’t long ago he was the butt of countless jokes and pranks, most orchestrated by Potter’s gang of Gryffindor fucks, but a few by some of your own.

None of them had been your friends, but they were still your housemates.

He hasn’t finished school yet, so who knows? Perhaps it’s still like that.

Yes, he’s yet another Death Eater, but he and Reggie look out for Leo.

You respect them for that much. So you decide to cut straight to the chase, the way you would if you were still a prefect giving him advice in the common room.

“We’re not trying to mock you,” you tell him gently. “It’s just that, ‘a bit excessive’, well, I haven’t heard such an understatement in a long time.”

“I haven’t heard an understatement like that ever,” Ignatius quips. “That was fucking _magnificent_ , Snape. Delivery and all.”

“Corona shoulda have been there for that,” Horatio adds.

Severus gives your group a nervous smile, not unlike the one he gave several people in the common room at the start of his first year, when some of you tried to make him feel like less of an outsider. So what if he was a halfblood? He was still a student in green and silver.

It’s not like the other houses would have looked out for him.

“Thank you for your compliments,” he says, and you don’t think he’s being entirely sarcastic.

When he finishes the remainder of his champagne, you elbow Horatio in the side.

“Scuse me, Barkeep! We need a refill over here!”

Severus attempts to protest halfheartedly, until Horatio refills his glass.

Then, Horatio puts a hand on the seventh year’s shoulder.

“Ever attended a Wizarding wedding before?”

Severus shakes his head.

“That’s tragic,” you tell him. “Last time someone got married, Thorfinn Rowle got so plastered that he fell into Macnair’s duck pond. Almost drowned and everything, in a bloody duck pond. His sister had to save his life.”

“You forgot the part where she punched him afterwards,” Ignatius says.

“Whoops.”

“So, are you trying to get me that plastered?” Severus asks, eyes narrowing in distrust.

All three of you shake your heads in tandem.

“Nope. You’d need to drink a lot more of this to manage that,” Horatio points out. “Also, there’re no ponds nearby, and we kind of like you as a person and all… No sense in drowning you.”

That gets another smile out of Severus.

“Why are you drinking so much, then?”

Ignatius snorts. “Weddings are generally more boring than History of Magic. They’re slightly less boring when you’re tipsy. Slightly, mind you.”

“I swear on my broomstick, when I finally get married---” you start in.

Horatio and Ignatius both shake their heads incredulously.

“You mean, when one of your lady ‘friends’ confunds you for long enough to get you to agree to such a thing,” Ignatius says.

You flip him off soundly.

“However it ends up happening, when I finally do get married, I am inviting no one but myself and the clergyman.”

“What about your wife to be?” Severus asks.

“Her too. I think she’s invited by default.”

Horatio grins at you. “Now, make sure you invite the right woman, Augustine.”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck you, Horatio.”

“See if I ever refill your glass again.”

The remainder of the hour ticks by with the three of you (well, counting Snape, the four of you) bullshitting like you always have. This stupid entrance hall might as well be your old dungeon common room, with merpeople pointing at you through the windows.

Later, comes the announcement.

“For those who have not yet done so, please enter the main chamber and find your seats. Ushers will be present to assist you. Furthermore, this is a reminder to please leave all your refreshments in this area. There are elves present to clean everything up.”

These instructions issue from a well-dressed man who looks either very stern or very constipated. You whisper something like that to Ignatius, who cackles loudly enough that several people turn to stare.

Once you get through the silver archway and inside the main chamber, which is positively huge, and shaped like a large half-circle, your general impression of things improves somewhat. Giant windows, flanked by open curtains, extend halfway toward the high ceiling.

Daylight filters in from above, as well as from the windows. You suppose the ceiling has been charmed like the Great Hall back at Hogwarts. It’s not as painfully ostentatious in here, although there’s still a bunch of gilded detailing. A few of those strange golden plants continue to wind around many of the walls.

Nevertheless, it beats the migraine chandelier, and those bloody frescoes.

Only once you take a good look around to get a feel for the number of attendees, do you fully realize how many people got invited. They all fit comfortably in here, but Merlin’s pants, you don’t think you could easily do a headcount. Overdressed ushers manage to direct each of you to your seats with minimal argument involved.

After you’re properly seated, you start suspect that Narcissa made up the seating plan, or at least had more influence on it than Lucius did. You’re in one of the rows of seats closer to the front, sandwiched between Severus Snape and Leo Travers.

Horatio admirably supports a wobbly Ignatius, and as per an usher’s instruction, drags him over to a seat almost directly behind yours.

“Why did you drink so much, you daft fuck?” Horatio mutters.

You figure it’s a rhetorical question, and for what it’s worth, Ignatius either cannot or does not answer it then and there.

Horatio shakes his head in contempt. “I know I didn’t fill your glass that many times.”

“Filled m’ own glass. Toldja I wasn’t pants at Charms.”

You wonder how his grandmother, Madam Selwyn herself, will react if and when she finally encounters him.

Meanwhile, Leo’s mouth is stuck agape at “wide enough to catch flies”. His head turns rapidly to and fro, as he struggles to take everything and everyone in.

“Keep doing that, and you’ll snap your neck, Travers,” you mutter out of the corner of your mouth. Severus does an excellent job of masking his snort as a cough.

Eventually Leo stops staring, or at least, focuses his stare in one direction. You follow his line of sight to none other than Barty Crouch Jr, a row behind you, and four or so seats over.

Leo waves eagerly at him, a gesture Crouch returns with a nod and a smile. You tug him sharply by the collar of his robes, back to attention.

“Sorry, Augustine,” he murmurs.

You’d roll your eyes, but there’s a minor scuffle going on in back of you, probably Horatio restraining Ignatius from doing anything more idiotic than what he’s already managed so far. Severus, though slightly red-faced from a few glasses of champagne, has schooled his expression into one of complete neutrality. Okay, not complete neutrality. The corners of his mouth twitch up each time either Ignatius or Horatio swears at the other.

You look to the center of the chamber, where another silver archway, framing a raised platform, has been decorated with gauzy orange-pink-or-something fabric wrapped carefully around its curving structure. Here and there, little white and orange flowers have been inserted into the fabric.

At the center of the platform stands the officiant, a small, squat wizard in dark dress robes. You’re pretty sure he officiated the last wedding you attended. You’re pretty sure he officiated your parents’ wedding, approximately three hundred years ago. You’re pretty sure he’ll be officiating Wizarding weddings long after you’re dead and buried. You wonder if he appears to preside over weddings like some kind of odd djinn, and once the ceremony is over, he disappears into the ether with a _crack_ until his services are needed again.

Oh, Augustine, while you are nowhere near as hammered as Ignatius, you probably drank too much.

Then the band, which you cannot see, begins to play, the sound seeming to issue from everywhere at once.

The attendees, many of whom had been chatting with each other amicably and softly, descend into almost total silence. Miraculously, even Horatio and Ignatius shut up.

You crane your neck so you can see properly.

The first person to start down the carpeted aisle is Druella Black, Narcissa’s mother, with slow, deliberate steps, her eyes set straight ahead. She wears on conservatively cut dress robes the color of… fuck, you don’t know. Peach, maybe? Something like that, like the fabric decorating the archway.

Just as Druella reaches her seat in the first row, you notice that Lucius and Rodolphus, who is presumably the best man, also stand on the platform now, having appeared from some unseen place.

Lucius has on extravagant dress robes that few grooms in their right mind would wear, but they’re not as absurd as you thought they would be. Considering the absurdity of the entrance hall, nothing short of multicolored diamond-encrusted lapels would have given you pause.

Then, the bridesmaids and groomsmen begin their progression. You had been barely listening when Calypso told you who they were weeks ago.

The first pair you see, arm in arm, are Corona and Corvus. Rather than looking ahead, his gaze is squarely affixed on the woman beside him.

Her peach dress robes are are much less conservative than Druella’s.

Horatio thumps you in the back of the head and points to Corvus with poorly-hidden amusement. You nod, mouthing the phrase “I know”. Horatio leans over so he can murmur something in your ear.

_“If he trips, I’m gonna die laughing, just you watch.”_

Leo takes one glance at his brother and shakes his head in embarrassment. And, Severus, like much of the men here - and a few women, you suppose - cannot help but stare at Corona. You’ve gotten fairly used to her weird part-veela charms, unless she’s decided to turn it up to eleven, which she has not.

She looks subtly different with her hair pinned up, and a single white flower tucked into it. You try to catch her eye as she passes you, but she seems genuinely serious for once. Once the pair reaches the platform, Corvus stands near the edge of the platform on Malfoy’s side, while Corona positions herself similarly far away on Narcissa’s side.

The next pair to pass you consists of Regulus Black and Sophia Diggory.

Sophia’s robes leave more to the imagination than Corona’s, but not even the makeup you’ve never seen her wear before can conceal her annoyance at being here. Or the way she nearly trips in heels that are too high for her. Regulus helps her up onto the platform.

They’re both Quidditch players and good friends. You have no clue how much wheedling it took Regulus to convince Sophia to do this. Gold may have been exchanged. Regulus stands beside Corvus, and Sophia stands beside Corona.

Pair number three, Antoinette Nott and Julius - who is more smartly dressed than the groom - manage to get down the aisle with the most finesse you’ve seen from any pair so far. They both look earnestly pleased, and take their places beside Sophia and Reggie without a hitch.

Then comes your brother and his escort, Elizabeth Rosier. There’s nothing all that noteworthy, about their procession, except for the fact that Jude insists on trying to wave to Nick.

Either Luke stomps on Jude’s foot, or he elbows him into submission.

You sigh.

You’re not sure whether your friends or your family are more embarrassing.

Nick takes the spot next to Regulus with a groan, while Elizabeth does her very best to keep her features composed. The last pair of bridesmaids and groomsmen down the altar are, of course, Calypso and Rabastan. As usual, Rabastan’s expression is inscrutable, but Calypso?

She is a woman transformed. Not unrecognizable, but slightly altered in a way you can’t pin down.

She wears the silver dragonfly hair ornament that Narcissa gave her for a birthday of hers, and someone’s done something to her hair to make it curl into neat ringlet-corkscrews. More strikingly, she smiles with such pride and joy that this might as well be her own wedding.

Out of all the party, she’s the first and only one to catch your eye and wink.

You smile back at her.

Once Rabastan takes his position between his brother and Nick, and Calypso moves to stand beside Elizabeth, a single woman starts down the long aisle, her peach dress robes fluttering behind her. Rather than coming off as haughty, as she often does, her movements seem more self-assured today.

She also looks strange with her long hair carefully pinned up, instead of hanging around her face in loose tangles. There are new angles in her face you’d never noticed. She continues to walk alone, gaze darting around the room.

For what it’s worth, she looks far less insane than usual. Like this, she could be just another a twenty-something in a friend or sister’s wedding party.

But she’s not. You know she’s not.

She’s not even like your mates, who follow the Dark Lord mostly since they were raised with certain beliefs have nothing better to do.

Bellatrix Lestrange believes with every fiber of her being in the Dark Lord’s agenda, because she’s a fanatic, a total fucking nut.

She stands next to Calypso, and the two of them nod politely at each other.

A little girl, from the Rowle side, no doubt - just look at all that long, straight hair - stumbles down the aisle with a basket. As she goes, she reaches into the basket, face screwed up in anxious concentration, and throws great handfuls of blossoms that quickly turn into little birds. They fly toward the rest of you, before disappearing in little sliver clouds.

A few people “ooh”, “ahh”, and coo over how adorable this child is.

After her comes the ring-bearer, who stumbles even more nervously down the aisle, nearly dropping the pillow. He’s a kid, though. You feel bad for him.

Then, people far behind you begin to stand up, one row at a time, and you’re not sure why, until you look back and see a woman in white, holding a bouquet of flowers.

The band swells into crescendo.

The sunlight shines down upon her singularly, throwing her intricately beaded dress and translucent veil into stark relief. She is positively resplendent to behold.

Her father, who leads her down the aisle, seems as if he’s a moment away from crying. Once Narcissa gets closer to your row, you can see the tears gathering in her own eyes, the serene smile on her face. She passes you, and the long train of her dress mushrooms out behind her.

“She’s _gorgeous,_ ” Leo gasps, almost reverently.

Rather than making a comment that you didn’t think he pitched the Quaffle for that team, you jam your hands into your pockets and keep your mouth shut.

Narcissa gets to the platform, and then the actual proceedings begin.

Call it a premonition, but you can tell this is going to be long, even longer than usual. You are going to be completely sober by the time it ends.

 _“Ladies and gentlemen,”_ the officiator begins, “ _we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of two faithful souls…”_

 _“Ignoring the time Lucius got trashed in third year and spent most of the night with that Hufflepuff girl,”_ Horatio mutters.

 _“Or the day Narcissa snogged your brother after we won the House Cup,”_ Ignatius adds.

Horatio makes a minor gurgling sound at the memory.

“Think they’re gonna have to take the faithful part out for your wedding, Augustine,” Ignatius tells you.

Severus glances over to you, with his eyebrows raised.

“Are they always this bad?” he whispers.

“Nah, they’re usually worse,” you whisper back. “Seeing as how Rosier and Nott are usually with us.”

“I see.”

The officiator drones on, with Horatio and Ignatius continuing to add their commentary, where applicable.

You try to stay awake for the entirety of the vows. You make an attempt, at the very least. But you haven’t been sleeping well, not since the last Order meeting.

“Wake me later,” you tell Leo.

Then, you tilt your head back, gaze up at the sky, and start to doze, floating somewhere between the waking and dreaming world.

It’s pleasant, this sky.

You recall the last time you, Lawrence Mulciber, Evan Rosier, Horatio, Ignatius, and Regulus decided to play Shuntbumps a few miles east of Rosier’s estate. You were all too old for this game, all too old to ram into each other and knock your opponents (everyone except yourself) off their brooms. You could have all been seriously injured, which didn’t stop you in the least.

Most of you were thirteen and fourteen by then, and Reggie was twelve.

You remember the pain of impact with another, the smell of grass - Lawrence kept sneezing due to hay fever - the warmth of sunshine, the feel of the breeze, and most of all, the infinite cloudless sky.

You guzzled cool drinks thirstily when you got back to Evan’s, each one of you caked with grime.

They’re all Death Eaters now.

Every single one of them has a tattoo and a mask. And since Dumbledore put you in the dueling group, a day will come where you will have to fight them, your old classmates, your old mates, the people you shared dormitories and secrets with.

Funny how all of this didn’t really hit you until today.

It’s so easy to view the Death Eaters as an unstoppable evil during Order meetings, when you can see the muggleborns they’ll either torture, kill, or both. But when you’re drinking with three of them, and mocking Lucius Malfoy, one of your old pastimes?

Horatio Avery, Ignatius Selwyn, and Severus Snape are not evil. If they are, it’s because they were raised in that tradition. It’s because they swore allegiance to a maniac before they got old enough to understand the ramifications, the permanence of the act.

You lot are only seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. And this war is far older than you are.

In a way, it’s as old as Slytherin himself.

This is about more than saving your own skin. You flat-out don’t want to fight them, but you must, not just because you’re an excellent duelist, and certainly not as per orders parceled out by that ancient fuck, but because you know their capabilities. You know what spells they know.

Still, you could resign from the Order. At least you think you could.

You could maintain a position of neutrality, never duel anyone, never hurt anyone, never - oh, please no - kill anyone.

But Calypso wouldn’t follow you out. Neither would Corona. Or Julius. Or, God help you, Leo. You wish you had some of the qualities that enable them to keep going, just a little of each. Calypso and her conviction. Corona and her guile. Julius and his morality. Leo and his idealism.

But you’re Augustine. Just Augustine. Only Augustine.

You hope that’s enough.

You don’t think it is.

After all is said and done, it’s not Leo who rouses you from your uneasy half-slumber. It’s Severus, shaking you awake, amid a great deal of ambient chatter. Eyes slitted against the light, you groan.

“How much left?” you want to know.

Leo jumps to answer. “The wizard in the front, he declared Narcissa and Lucius bonded for life, and there was this huge show of little lights forming around them, and--”

Severus cuts him off.

“It’s over, Greengrass,” he says smoothly. “I wish I could have slept as easily as you. Ignatius was right.”

“He was?”

“It was more boring than History of Magic. So much more.”

Leo frowns. “I thought it was beautiful.”

You and Severus exchange significant glances. You stretch, yawn, and rise from your seat. “Right. so where did Horatio and Ignatius go?”

“The reception hall.” Severus points to a doorway. “Apparently cocktails are being served now.”

You, Severus and Leo follow the stragglers into the reception hall, which - thankfully - is also not as obnoxious to behold as the receiving hall. You can’t make out Horatio or Ignatius, either fortunately or unfortunately. You’re sure they’ll make their presence known through some kind of intoxicated shenanigans.

You alternatively work your way around people you don’t know, or pause to greet those you do know. Someone claps you on the back and starts shaking your hand vigorously before you can even figure out who they are.

“Excellent to see you, m’boy, absolutely excellent,” Professor Slughorn insists, relinquishing his hold on your hand at last.

“Nice to see you too, sir. Thank you for your recommendation for that internship by the way,” you respond.

“Always glad to help the up and coming,” Professor Slughorn says. “You’re going places, Augustine. Just like Nick ..”

You turn, and neither Severus nor Leo are anywhere to be found.

Once you manage to escape Slughorn, after he’s found another target, you run into Sophia, who gives you a wan smile, a little brandy snifter in her hand.

“What’re you playing at, Diggory?” you chuckle. “No way any waiter or usher mistook you for seventeen.”

“You’d be surprised what I can play after I’ve been made to stand for several hours.” She points down to her stocking feet, which are now swollen. “If Reggie asks me to dance tonight, I’ll murder him.”

“And then Slytherin’ll be down a Seeker,” you point out.

“What d’you care? Aren’t you trying out for the Wasps?”

You cross your arms over your chest. “A good captain never stops caring about his old team. So how are you lot holding up?”

“Lost a match to Hufflepuff, but I think we’re still in the running as long as we trounce Ravenclaw, which I think we can.”

“Keep up the good work, then.”

She mock-salutes you, before disappearing back into the mingling crowd.

It takes you half an hour to find one of your group, and you’re positively glad to find her. Honestly, she’s the one who finds you, a glass of Ogden’s Old in her hand and the usual irreverent grin on her face.

“Well, Gus,” Corona begins. “Didja sleep well?”

So she had been watching you during the proceedings, however briefly. You nod, grimacing all the while.

“I always sleep well, Corona, don’t you know?”

Her expression darkens by a degree. She touches you arm, her eyes flicking around the hall.

No one seems to be paying attention to you.

“Are you ready?” she asks.

She could be asking about the reception in general, but you know she isn’t.

“Not really.”

“Good,” she confesses, taking a gulp from her glass. “Neither am I.”

You shake her hand off, and drum your fingers against the wall. “Where’s Cal?”

Corona shrugs, and points vaguely in the direction left of her.

“Stopping Iggy from drinking his weight in mead last I checked. Apparently Lawrence dared him to down as much as he could, as fast as he could, and you know how he never backs off a dare.” Corona rolls her eyes. _“Ever.”_

“How long ago?”

“Maybe two minutes before I ran into you.”

Calypso hasn’t set the reception part of her plan in motion then. Not yet. Neither have you. You draw a modicum of solace from this, and gently take Corona by the arm.

“Why, Augustine,” Corona says between giggles. “I never knew you were such a gentleman.”

Perish the thought.

“Let’s go find Ignatius before he drowns, yeah?”

Another moment of wordless understanding passes between you and her. Corona’s face doesn’t even change for it.

She merely throws her head back, laughs, and starts to lead you to where she last saw Ignatius, Calypso, and Lawrence.

This should be quite fun, Mr. Greengrass.”

Fun.

Yeah.

Assuming you don't get caught.

 


	7. there's a shadow hanging over me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been wanting to write this 90s era chapter for a while  
> finally got around to it

**_October 1990_ **

As you have ever since you took this Ministry job, you arrive to work a minute or two early, breakfast and coffee from the Leaky Cauldron in one hand, and your walking stick in the other. Your endlessly energetic assistant, Morgan Applebee, is quick to greet you over his stack of paperwork.

“Good morning, Mr. Greengrass!”

You tip your hat to him, then hang it on the appropriate hook.

“Good morning.”

You pass him his share of breakfast. He thanks you, but continues to stare at you, almost expectantly. You open today’s edition of the Daily Prophet, scan half of it, and when your eyes flick up again, he’s still staring.

“Something wrong, Applebee?”

He shakes his head. “No sir, nothing wrong. It’s just…”

If anyone's been harassing this kid, you'll kill them.

“Just what?”

“Isn’t today your birthday?”

You stare down the calendar on the wall, which reads _23 October 1990,_ and confirm that, yes, today, you are thirty-two. 

And if you’re thirty-two today, that means there’s only a week or so until the godawful Halloween celebrations in Diagon Alley take place.

Every year since 1981, wizards and witches have caroused and danced in the streets on the 31st of October to commemorate the death of the Dark Lord. And every year since 1981, you have spent nearly Halloween on the bender to end all benders, too plastered to do anything except drink more firewhiskey and stew in your recollections.

“Yes, Applebee,” you tell him. “It’s my birthday.”

“Happy birthday, sir!” he exclaims, picking up his coffee cup and insisting on toasting to your good health. Your good health. Right. 

Halloween in a week, and he wants to toast to your health.

If you weren’t frequently so amused by and concerned for this kid in turns, twenty-one, and barely out of Hogwarts, you’d throttle him for dredging up memories.

But he doesn’t understand. It’s not his fault. 

And he has experienced loss as well.

He was quite young when the Dark Lord fell. 

He told you he’d been a first year in Hogwarts then. Nobody in the whole school believed it until Dumbledore himself made the announcement at breakfast. Applebee’s father had died in the crossfire between Death Eaters and Order members a few months prior, leaving him with his last name, his unbalanced mother, and a reasonable amount of gold in Gringotts.

You and he had this conversation the not long after he became your assistant. He’d asked you, last year, on the 30th, what your plans for the 31st were. Which pub you’d recommend most for the festivities. Not that he felt much like celebrating, but he thought it was expected of him. The way it was expected of most everyone.

This child’s father - yet another innocent bystander -  had died during a later battle, when both sides were dueling to kill. Since he’d died possibly by the hand of one of your allies, possibly by your hand, you had apologized to him. 

And Morgan, one of the nicest people you’ve met since the war ended, had insisted to you that there was nothing to forgive.

“You were in the Order, weren’t you, sir?”

You nodded. “Yes, Morgan. Yes, I was.”

“So was my aunt Ivy,” he went on. “She told me later.”

You remember her. 

Ivy Applebee, nee Chang, one of Corona’s old girlfriends. One of the people she’d actually dated for a fair bit of time. A muggleborn.

She lived through the war, got married and everything. You don’t know if she had children. You never sought her out to ask. You assumed she would have been as uncomfortable around you as you would have been around her.

“You lot were trying to stop You-Know-Who, yeah?” Morgan asked, voice lowered to a whisper. 

You sighed, and took a sip of your coffee. “Trying is the operative word. We did  _ try. _ ”

“Well, things happen,” he replied.

You’d given him the same line after he’d spilled coffee all over your day’s work, and it took you hours to clean and restore each sheet of paper.

_ “Sometimes things happen. Things we don’t intend.” _

Spilling coffee is one thing. Possibly killing someone is another. However, Morgan didn’t seen it that way. Still doesn’t. 

He greets you each morning like he’s actually glad to see you. His eyes light up every time you decide to tell him a story from your old Quidditch days. 

(“You really played alongside Ludo Bagman?”

“He works upstairs, a department over. You could ask him yourself.”

“I could, sir,” Applebee says, “But he’s  _ Ludo Bagman _ .”

That reminded you so much of Leo Travers stating that he’d never approach Julius Flint because the man was pretty much second only to God, that you nearly began to cry.)

But yeah. Today’s your birthday.

That probably explains the letter you got in the post from Luke, inviting you over for dinner tonight. Normally that sort of thing is reserved for Sundays. However, it being your birthday and all… you guess he has something planned.

You put in your eight hour shift at the Ministry, and then Apparate to Luke’s.  

Tolsey’s in the front yard, raking up and bagging red-orange leaves that have fallen from the chestnut trees that flank the front walk to his estate. 

She’s a little older and less excitable than she was when Calypso owned her, and far less despondent than she was for the month or so that you owned her, before gifting her to Luke - you couldn’t stand her presence, not after what happened to Cal - but she still has it in her to clap her hands and smile brightly at you.

“Master Augustine!” she exclaims. “Happy birthday!”

“Thanks, Tolsey,” you tell her. 

You know she and other elves have weird magic that you cannot comprehend, but there are a great number of leaves still left for her to dispose of. And she is still tiny.

“D’you want any help?” you ask her. 

She shakes her head emphatically. “Oh no, Tolsey can handle this all by herself, don’t you worry Master Augustine.” 

You smile at her.  “Is Luke home yet?”

She pauses to lean on the rake, a fair bit taller than she.

“Tolsey has not seen Luke yet, but Mistresses Siobhan, Daphne, and Astoria are inside.”

You’re surprised the latter two have gotten out of Madam Selwyn’s so early. Normally lessons would go into the evening, until 6:30 or thereabouts. Then again, unless you’ve messed up their ages, they’ll be going to Hogwarts soon. You think Daphne’s set to start next year.

You stumble up the front walk and ring the bell, listening briefly to their soft chimes.

“Just a moment!” calls Siobhan. 

She lets you in, hugs you quickly, and wishes you a happy birthday, leading you through the house, into the sitting room. Your leg is bothering you again. You hate when that happens. You ease yourself into a parlor chair and balance your cane against the back of it.

From upstairs, you can hear the voices of two young girls, arguing over Latin declensions. That’ll be Daphne and Astoria, then.

“So where’s Luke?” you ask Siobhan. 

She raises an eyebrow and shrugs.

“He’s going to be late coming home,” she says. Then, more scathingly, “As usual. I fail to understand why he gives me his work schedule if he never intends on obeying it.”

You chuckle at her. Years of marriage have done nothing to dampen her incisive wit. She sits in another chair, not far away from yours. 

She takes a little bell out of her pocket, and shakes it. Tolsey appears, somehow clean, despite the fact that she had been doing yard work not ten minutes ago.

“Is Mistress Siobhan wanting my assistance?”

Siobhan nods, extending one slender arm toward you. “Refreshments for our guest?”

“Yes, Mistress!”

She returns the bell to her pocket and sighs.

“I do believe Daphne and Astoria have come to view their father as a somewhat hypothetical figure in light of things.”

“He’s doing important work at the Ministry, Siobhan,” you say fairly.

“And you’re not?”

You do your best not to snort impolitely at the very idea of your work being even vaguely important most of the time.

“I work in broom regulatory control, Siobhan. Most of my job is signing off on incident reports with regards to wizards flying into muggle territory. Meanwhile, Luke is one of the Minister’s advisors.”

“That is true,” she says. “Helga knows the Minister can use as many advisors as he can get.”

You chuckle again. 

For a pureblood woman, raised in the tradition of not becoming too entangled in politics, Siobhan is fairly blunt about her disapproval of Cornelius Fudge. 

When he first came into office, she confessed that she would have most certainly seen Albus Dumbledore take the post rather than this daft man. When you told her that you did not think Dumbledore would have been suited for the job either, she deferred to your sentiments.

“Well, you did know him better than I, after all,” she said. “Apparently.”

Seldom did Luke or Siobhan reference your old days in the Order of the Phoenix. Siobhan did more often. For Luke, the topic was absolutely verboten.

As Luke made clear when his first daughter was born, he wanted his family as far away from that nonsense as possible. For a while, that meant that he wanted  _ you  _ as far away from his family as possible.

Siobhan had been slightly more sympathetic. Though she was a pureblood, she had once been a Macmillan, and a Hufflepuff, meaning that more than a few of her housemates had gone your route.

“I always warned them to keep their heads down, but when your friends are being killed for what they are, there’s only so much you can accept,” she’d said to you once. “Personally,  _ I _ kept my head down, of course. Better them than me.”

But the more years that passed since the downfall of the Dark Lord, the more you and Luke tried to mend fences.

On the fourth anniversary of Halloween 1981, once you’d downed an entire bottle of Ogden’s Old, enough to make you embarrassingly maudlin, you remarked to Luke that nearly everyone who’d loved you was either dead or insane.

“I‘m here, Augustine,” he said, rolling you onto your side so you wouldn’t aspirate on your own vomit. “I won’t leave you.”

That was when he started inviting you ‘round every Sunday for dinner. You and your other brothers. But Jude, who is now an Unspeakable, seldom accepts his invitations. And Nick doesn’t even work in this country anymore. 

Of course, you were forbidden from mentioning anything related to your old life to his young daughters, or, technically, to Siobhan. It’s not as if you would have. Privately, you think Astoria, who is more like her mother than anyone else, even as young as she is, might have liked Calypso.

When the Greengrass sisters are finally done arguing over their Latin homework, they run downstairs to greet you. 

Uncle Augustine, who almost always arrives with some gift for them. 

You stand, they dash into you arms, and nearly knock you over.

Siobhan starts to chide them, but you interrupt her.

“My, you’ve gotten so big,” you tell these two young ladies. It’s true. They have. 

You haven’t been around Luke’s for dinner in ages, not since Cornelius Fudge got sworn in as minister. Your poor brother has been too buried in work to properly have you over. He still checks on you, obviously - you two do work in the same place after all - but it’s been a fair bit of time since you’ve seen Siobhan or your nieces. 

They’re not your daughters, but you know in your heart that you likely won’t have any children, so you love them just as fiercely as you would if they were. Even more, maybe, if such a thing were possible. They're proof that there is a future with children. That there will be children who view the Dark Lord as nothing more than a piece of history. 

“Happy birthday!” Astoria practically shouts. 

She flings her arms around your neck, and you spin her around a few times, just like the old days, with her long brown hair flaring out behind her. 

She’s still small and girlish, looking even younger than she is, but Daphne’s shot up like a weed. She’s nearly as tall as her mum now.   

“You’ll aggravate his leg,” Daphne warns. 

Astoria tries and fails to look contrite, once lets go of you. 

Your leg is positively screaming at you, telling you that you’ll be too sore to do little more than limp for the next several days, but you can ignore it for now. You’ve become good at ignoring it. 

“Doesn’t seem that aggravated to me,” she shoots back.

Normally, you would have presents for them, either small trinkets picked up from one of the shops in Diagon Alley, or perhaps books, but you hadn’t remembered.

“We have gifts for you, Uncle,” Daphne says, as if she’s anticipated your thoughts.

“But they have to wait until Father gets home,” Astoria says. “After dinner, and everything.”

Siobhan puts one hand each on of her daughters’ shoulders. 

“That, they do.”

Since they’ve finished their assignments from Madam Selwyn’s, and you’ve already exhausted your repertoire of Quidditch stories, you decide to regale your nieces with tales from work. Salazar knows they’re not as entertaining, but occasionally you encounter a gem in your paperwork. Something too amusing to let pass without comment.

“So you know the Malfoys, yeah?”

“Naturally,” says Daphne.

“Unfortunately,” says Astoria.

Siobhan covers her mouth so she can stifle her laughter.

“Then you must know their son, Draco,” you continue.

“Of course,” says Daphne.

“Unfortunately,” repeats Astoria.

Daphne shoots Astoria a reproachful look, and Astoria is quick to defend her word choice.

“What? We see him at Madam Selwyn’s  _ every day _ ,” Astoria says. “And you  _ agreed  _ with me when I said he was a haughty git.”

Daphne’s mouth drops open in indignation, as if to imply that she would never deign to express such a sentiment.

“I see that he takes after Lucius, then,” Siobhan says, so low that only you can hear.

Very narrowly, you stop yourself from laughing. You continue the story.

“At any rate, Draco decided to take a ride on his father’s old broomstick. Somehow, he flew clear into muggle territory. Not just any muggle territory, mind, but London, almost right over the place where the muggles house their Head of State. He’d gotten high enough in the air that one of those what-do-you-call-them…” You pause, twirling your index finger around, like the propeller of the contraption you’re trying to call to mind. “One of those muggle flying devices, helicopters, I think they’re called... Well, they came to apprehend him.”

Astoria and Daphne gaze at you like you’re speaking gibberish.

“Anyway, he was so terrified that he got into the device with the muggles, and they managed to get him down to the ground. Of course, the Ministry had to call in an army of Obliviators, and according to the incident report, even the muggle  _ government  _ had been scared shi--er… witless by this one kid on a broomstick. They thought he was part of an enemy attack from some other country.”

Astoria bursts out laughing so hard that she nearly knocks over her glass of pumpkin juice. Daphne makes her amusement known with  _ slightly _ more dignity. Siobhan shakes her head and buries her rapidly reddening face in her hands, trying to stop giggling.

“You can’t be serious, Augustine,” Siobhan says.

“I will return to my office, find a copy, come back here, and physically  _ show  _ you the report.”

She shakes her head in utter wonder. 

“Well, that sounds too ridiculous for you to have made up on the spot.”

Luke does eventually get home, looking as if he’s been awake for the last five days. For all you know, he has. 

Although Siobhan suggests the girls wait until after dinner to give you their gifts, they are - the two of them both agreeing for once - adamant that you open them now.

“I want uncle to see my gift,” Astoria insists.

“Me too,” Daphne says.

After a certain amount of wheedling, they convince you. You understand why Luke thinks the sun rises and sets on his daughters, you really do. They’re both delights, even when they’re annoying you. Luke raises an eyebrow at them. You open Daphne’s gift first, and make a show of opening it, because, “Daphne is the oldest, after all.”

Astoria sticks out her lower lip, looking crestfallen. But you know it’s just an act. You’ve known her long enough for that.

Daphne’s gotten you a winter cloak, one more stately than the one you have. It is quite handsome. Your younger self would have strut around in it with glee. You thank her for it, openly, honestly, and she clasps both your hands in her smaller ones.

“For the winter, Uncle.”

You think of the play Horatio once quoted, as a joke, during breakfast in the Great Hall, a few weeks before Christmas, after Hufflepuff defeated Slytherin in a match - 200 to 85.

_ “Now is the winter of our discontent.” _

You can’t remember the context of the line. Not like you care(d). 

But what Daphne doesn’t know, except when she - more perceptive than Astoria by half - asks you why you look sad so often, is that your winter began in 1981 and never quite lifted. So you will treasure this cloak, even if it’s a bit showy for your current tastes, because it is from her.

You open Astoria’s gift not long after just to set the girl at ease. Though she’s tucked her legs beneath her, she’s practically bouncing off the balls of her feet with anticipation.

It’s a walking stick. A nicer looking one. Apparently Madam Malkin’s does have good taste once or twice a century. You take Astoria’s shoulders and kiss her on top of her forehead. She smiles.

“You really like it?”

“Of course I do,” you reply. You do. It’s from her, and it does have a certain dignity about it. You take out your wand, tap your old cane, vanish it, and let the new one take the old one’s spot behind to you. “See? That’s how much I like it.”

Astoria’s smile widens. 

Luke grins at the both of you, much as he’s trying not to.

Once all of you have taken your seats at the dining room table, Tolsey serves dinner. Luke pours you more than a spot of mead and wishes you a happy 32nd. 

“I don’t think birthdays count all that much after thirty,” you tell him, half-jesting.

Luke thinks for a moment. “More of a countdown to forty than anything else.”

“So how’s your countdown going, then?” you ask. 

“It’s going,” he replies. “The Minister’s giving me more grey hair by the day.”

Daphne rises high enough from her seat to critically assess the state of her father’s hair.

“Doesn’t seem any greyer to me, Papa.”

“It’s not like we’d know anymore,” Astoria adds. 

Siobhan begins to laugh again straightaway, covering her mouth with her hand.  After a second of looking stern, so does Luke himself. 

You nod and chuckle where appropriate during dinner, but the longer you crack jokes for the benefit of Luke, Siobhan, Astoria, and Daphne, the more tired you get. Not physically. Physically, you’re in too much pain to feel tired.

Mentally is a different story. The closer you get to Halloween, the less you want to be around people. It’s not their fault. It’s just your way.

Maybe you should avail yourself of the mind healer that Auror Shacklebolt recommended for you. But you’re not fond of the idea of anyone poking around in your head. You don’t need to pay someone several Galleons an hour to tell you that the front lines of a war were no place for a young adult and that you’re probably going to be not-all-there for life in terms of sanity.

So you’re not sorry to leave after a few more glasses of mead.

You shake Luke’s hand heartily. You compliment Siobhan on her taste. You hug both your nieces for as long as you can. Astoria wants to know - for the nine thousandth time in history, you really have to admire her tenacity - if she can spend a weekend with you. From the look in Daphne’s eyes, these two have agreed on something yet again.

“I don’t know if that’s a good id--” Luke begins, but you interrupt him with an answer of your own. 

“I’ve got so much work to complete; my flat’s not a place for you and Daphne. I’m too busy to watch you properly.”

The girls seem to accept this answer, although Daphne looks as if she knows you aren’t telling the whole truth.

You’ll bring gifts for the girls next time. A paperweight with a bit of fluff swimming in it for Astoria, and a great deal of chocolate frogs for Daphne. You know she has a sweet tooth. And a penchant for collecting things.

You walk past the wards protecting the second Greengrass estate and apparate home.

As soon as you get home, you wish you were back with your nieces and brother. 

They’re so kind. They don’t know how to be, except kind. You have to hand it to Luke and Siobhan for raising their daughters that way, for being that way.

You look around your empty flat and wonder if it’d be more cheerful if you’d bothered to have children. You don’t think so. You’d just be your unreliable self, but with children of your own to care for. That sounds worse than the status quo.

So you look through an old photo album until it hurts to keep going. Then, you do paperwork until your eyes cross and you fall asleep at the chair in your sitting room.


End file.
